Melville Exhibition and Events Services has become the first exhibition and event services contractor in the UK to be awarded BS8901 through independent certification.

Melville used the services of SGS, an independent auditing organisation, to ratify its application and to ensure absolute integrity in the process. Working with sustainability consultancy partners Sustainable Events Ltd, Melville established key performance indicators for all on-site activities and developed a set of benchmark measurements for waste separation, reuse, recycle and safe disposal of all major production materials within its UK operations.

Rebecca Saunders of Sustainable Events Ltd said, “It is a great achievement for such a large organisation to demonstrate real sustainability credentials by achieving third party certification. The senior management team grasped the opportunity to integrate sustainability on all levels throughout the business. They have seen a tangible reduction in their impact on the environment and the community while benefiting the bottom line.”

A management system has been implemented for all aspects of sustainability and the company's sustainability policy has been made public on the company website. Alongside this Melville has created a cross-functional Sustainability Team, which has evolved from its ‘Green’ environmental team.

Melville group operations director Gary Styles said, “We recognised the importance of sustainability in our industry, as have many key customers, and we are now able to help and support them to realise their own sustainability objectives through the knowledge we gained from the process of achieving BS8901.”

Melville is also currently the only UK exhibition and event services contractor to be part of the new International Standard for Event Sustainability (ISO 20121) working group. When it is published next year, this future ISO will become the definitive standard for event sustainability management best practice worldwide.

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