UEFA Champions League Final 2024
AGF is having a whirlwind summer, juggling various projects, our wonderful assessors out at festivals worldwide, and starting the preparation for GEI17. Amid all this activity, taking a look back to the start of summer, during the UEFA Champions League Final 2024, we were given the opportunity to put our sustainability game plan into action across London’s Champion Festival and Fan Meeting Point sites.
Because who says you can’t enjoy world-class football and work towards a sustainable future at the same time?
AGF teamed up with LS Events, the Greater London Authority (GLA), and various event partners to measure and improve sustainability around the free-to-access UEFA Champions Festivals and Fan Meeting Points, covering the UEFA Champions League Final (UCLF), at various locations around London between Thursday 30th May to Sunday 2nd June.
Across numerous sites including Trafalgar Square, Regents Street, Somerset House, Potters Field Park, Victoria Embankment, Hyde Park, and various Southbank areas, thousands of people saw great initiatives in place, including: AGF supported the waste reduction efforts which included extensive material reductions and reuse programmes - reusable cups for bars, dedicated dry mixed recycling (DMR) waste streams, providing back-of-house (BOH) food waste bins across all sites to increase segregation, and separating unavoidable soft plastics from packaging, that were collected to be turned into furniture by MyGroup supported by Fuse agency.
We also prioritised charity donations as part of our sustainability efforts - a significant food salvage operation resulted in almost 770 kg of food being salvaged by City Harvest, which equates to approximately 1,824 meals provided to charities, soup kitchens, and more. Other donated items included 420 sqm of carpets, 2400 sqm of scrim, and over 450 lanyards, were given to charities supporting families in need, child development through play therapy, and children hospice centres.
CO2 analysis is another crucial aspect of our service, ongoing this month as we collect and crunch the data, covering energy, transport, waste, water and food and drink, with efforts to measure and improve efficiencies and set a high standard for future events. The event also adopted the seaweed serveware from Notpla and MyEmissions provided carbon labels for menus to nudge audience choices towards low emission plant based meals.
AGF helped the event delivery team using the comprehensive AGF Event Sustainability Framework to scope and gather data for the Carbon Footprint analysis, create a Sustainable Event Policy, and put a detailed Event Sustainability Action Plan in place to allocate tasks and track status throughout the event - including consultancy and support covering procurements, waste management planning, food and beverage, serveware, merchandise, communications, and more.
If you're curious about our current projects and the exciting news on the horizon, be sure to follow us on social media and sign up to our newsletter for the latest updates. We’ve got plenty more to share this summer!
