BDC are double winners at the ‘Giant Green Awards’
9 Jun 2008

The Business Design Centre (BDC) scooped 2 prizes at the inaugural ‘Giant Green Awards’ organised by Islington Council. The first was picked up in the waste minimisation category and the second was as the overall winners of the ‘large companies’ category. The gala ceremony, held at the HAC on City Road last week celebrated the commitment of Islington businesses to environmental responsibility.

Graham Stephenson, Chief Operating Officer, BDC, says: “We were up against extremely tough competition. To win in both categories is a great achievement and highlights our ongoing commitment to recycling and development of environmental initiatives. We have consistently acted in an environmentally responsible manner, by improving and implementing effective recycling and sustainable schemes, together with increasing awareness of such issues amongst our key stakeholders, including; organisers, exhibitors, visitors, tenants, contractors and staff.”

‘Green’ targets featured strongly in the BDC’s core corporate objectives and an Environmental Committee was formed, made up of senior management and members of staff from every department whose role it was to set out specific ‘green’ objectives.

The numerous practical initiatives introduced saw many environmental benefits, examples include:

• £1.3m roof replacement – allows more natural light into the building enabling the BDC to reduce lighting and gives better insulation so less heating is required.
• A change in the way stock panel is constructed for events to reduce the use of timber. This saves of 20,000 linear metres of batten per year.
• Eco-kettles provided to all 120 offices within the venue.
• All toilets have been fitted with Dyson Airblade hand driers resulting in energy usage in this area being reduced by 81%.
• Recycling of waste from skips - Prior to this year all skip waste went direct to land fill. The BDC now works with a company that recycles 60% of all skip waste – approximately 170 tons this year.

The percentage of waste recycled in the past year was 31% exceeding our internal target of 27%.

The company is also involved with community projects such as working with the Children’s Scrap Project which collects our usable waste and distributes it to local schools to use in their art projects and is a member of Islington Climate Change Partnership run by Islington Council - working together to reduce the boroughs carbon footprint by 15% by 2010.