[Music] hello and welcome to our site here in worcestershire we're live and we don't normally dress like this as if we're in the garden but today that's exactly what we are doing we are going to be doing a bit of gardening and it's to celebrate the launch of our csr charter which is our commitment to the environment the community and well-being so over the next 20 minutes we are going to be planting 40 trees to celebrate our 40th anniversary of being in business so guys you better get going so to minimize travel uh we are live to our london office we're also streaming to our clients and to our suppliers and if you've got any questions along the way please type them into the portal and if you're in their london office we're going to go be live to you in a few minutes so our csr journey started over 12 years ago when a chance meeting with sam wilson from eco events started that journey sam has helped us and worked with us for the last 12 years when we originally got bs 8 901 and then 2012 one and looking at our systems and processes now sam's in our london office sam how important is the whole sustainability piece for organizations like drpg hello dell and warm welcome everybody um so it's really essential for all organizations to understand what i call their sustainability hotspots where they can make the biggest difference and for organizations like drpg this isn't just about your the activities and the impacts related to your activities it's also about using your brilliance so your creative communication skills to mobilize and amplify positive change and that's amongst all stakeholders that's amongst clients suppliers your internal team event attendees and the audiences a little bit like what you're doing today dale actually okay like so so around 12 months ago we started to feel that the whole sustainability piece was getting a little bit samey in some sectors it was still a tick box exercise so cecilia from our marketing department she joined us 12 months ago and she's really passionate about sustainability and she has suggested a um a policy around as charter and creation of a csr charter so unfortunately on our launch day cecilia's not very well so we're going back to london uh with ryan from our marketing department who's with sam ryan tell us about cecilia's passion and why she wanted to do this yes as dal mentions obviously cecilia has been working on this and unfortunately she's not here to stay due to being unwell so we wish her better um i think the first thing was we wanted to get a public facing manifesto and cecilia came to us with this idea 12 months ago and obviously has been working on this as a consultancy in a collaboration with eco events with sam as well and the idea of the csr charter was that the aim was to create a trust and transparency to all of our stakeholders and how drpg is doing good business responsibly and sustainably and i think the other key here is moreover is that we as a as we operate as a global space um what we're trying to do and what we are doing is aligning our efforts with the un global compact sustainable development goals which gives us greater clarity um and also is able to contribute to not just our immediate environment but widely as a society of what we can do as a force and it's a really exciting thing and today is the day that we get to launch that and really shout about it as well great thanks ryan and you can see images on the screen from the charter which will be available on our website after this broadcast so sam what's the the impact really now with the isos the 14001 and 2012 one well the isos are a moving feast they're really a framework within which you operate so the fact that you had those there in the first place really enabled us to hone in and target those those values those areas where drpg can make the biggest difference and as part of that process we've been streamlining we've been making it much less about paperwork and more about action and making those effects really tangible and real and relevant great so i've moved out to see what the guys are up to here uh now we're a big site we're we're four and a half acres uh 300 our team out of the 350 of our team work on this site and we have about 7 000 visitors a year so really this site has to be come our focus first of all and part of this tree planting is that but so tell us guys what are you actually doing today carl so what are these trees uh well they're apple trees uh i think i'm not sure what this one is yeah yeah so yeah apple tree yeah and uh we're just digging the hole getting it in the ground and yeah great and it turned all the way around there so we're looking forward to to eating these apples in a couple of years time and of course another big part of it is scsr challenges and we've set ourselves 40 challenges this year to complete over the 12 months and it's part of hundreds of challenges that we've done over the years and rachel and james tell us a little bit about the type of stuff we've done in the past um so i've been here for about 13 years i'm within technical services and we've raised a hell of a lot of money for local charities so we've done the three peaks challenge a 24-hour rowing challenge we rode a rickshaw from our london office in covent garden all the way up to here in hartlebury and a team of us did the birmingham velo as well all raising money for local charities because what i'm trying to convince the team to do now is to do it from a cologne office now to to here in that rickshaw bro we'll cheer you on dialogue thank you and james tell us about some of the stuff you've been involved in from your point of view so this isn't actually our first tree planting uh exercise is it thing our 30th we planted 30 trees um in an area of outstanding scientific interest wasn't it an area of scientific interest we've also worked with local schools we've helped restore ponds protecting newts um yeah there's lots of things we've been doing and you're involved in one of the projects this year tell us a little bit about that so uh my my eco warrior of a son has found a browser not a browser sorry it's an internet search engine that um every time you do a search uh they go towards uh the revenue goes towards planting trees all over the world so it's as simple as that using a different browser different search engine help plan trees and and one thing that's really close to my heart is how we we bring on the next generation and one of those projects is called sparks and it seems quite fitting we've got george here come on closer george one of our apprentices who works in our academy who's been working on this sparks program tell us about it so sparx is our school's program we realize there's not much in the creative industry to get people to come into our industry so we created one ourselves so we partnered with 10 local schools each of each school gets a guest speaker an apprentice assembly they get training packages designed by us and they get to come in and learn a bit more about what we do brilliant thank you very much so environmentally what are we doing then more on this site to to make us zero carbon zero and let's go on the roof to look at one of the initiatives and speak to richard thanks dale i'm just on our brand new roof overlooking the beautiful views of worcestershire so over the last 12 months we've really seen some big developments on our site with two new buildings a new roof system and some landscaping across some key areas in our business this has given us the opportunity to look at the environmental impact of our facilities from tree planting insulation water usage and energy saving it's the energy saving we're really focusing on at the moment over the next few weeks over 700 solar panels will be installed across the warehouse behind me this will give us over 194 kilowatts of renewable energy while saving over 100 tons of carbon each year so all of this is part of a two and a half million pound investment into the infrastructure here on this site back to you dale thanks richard and it's not just about those big big projects like solar panels it's about the small things as well so we formed our environmental team and there's just a few representatives of that team we talk about some of the things that we're doing some of those simple things sophie we're looking at fair trade in the team cafe we've already banned plastic bottles and ultimately we'd like to go single use plastic free yeah and waste so we are trying to reduce our waste on-site and at our events and we're aiming to be zero to landfill by the end of the year and what about resourcing so a couple of examples of how we've thought about resourcing is in print and we've eradicated vinyl and also in the tech team with carpets we're trying to use eradicate single-use carpets to have reusable carpets okay and andrew your integrity manager which sounds very grand what does that involve basically i'm responsible for all the management systems for audits and compliance this is to ensure that we achieve our objectives and maintain the integrity of our business i also support the team with sustainability environmental management health and safety and security and on that regulation piece and compliance presumably we get audited quite a lot yes from accreditation bodies clients on a range of compliance issues fantastic so we talked a lot about internally what we're doing what about our suppliers and their clients and i got with you know gemma who's uh in a live area from a key account manager or head of key accounts um gemma talk about externally what we're doing with our suppliers and their clients so as part of our commitment to sustainability we monitor our suppliers activity some of what uh used to be um voluntary is now mandatory uh and therefore with our processes and therefore we're helping with support and guidance for our suppliers so for example when we use an external venue we're looking at their commitment to their sustainability backed up by real action so are they supplying tap water instead of bottled water and or do they have a sustainability policy in place okay and from a client point of view they come to us i want to create a more sustainable event how can we help we're increasingly being asked by clients to look at their events and projects and make them more sustainable so that might be things like having a local project community project involved as part of the event looking at landfill and waste local sourcing travel for delegates and offsetting so we're always looking to reduce the impacts that that project has on the local community and the environment and one thing i've heard clients say in the past isn't it going to cost us more money not really and in some cases it can actually reduce costs so for example we had a recent event for uh food clients i managed to reduce their cost by around four thousand pounds on landfill just by looking at things from a slightly different angle brilliant and from your point of view andrew will you be recording all this activity i'll record all the project data in the management systems yep brilliant great thank you so there it is uh the guys are still planting i think they're digging we're struggling a little bit with some of these holes here um our csr charter is our commitment our commitment to the environment our commitment to the community let's say to well-being and it will be a road map for the next 10 years um so what i'd like to do now is open up a question so i think let's go to london first have you got any questions yeah we have um so one question that's coming is um will we be looking to provide this csr charter as a service to support our clients um and how will we go about doing that so i think it's one for yourself down also yourself as well sam yeah i think from our point of view as gemma said absolutely we'll be looking at where we can support our current clients but also other organizations that may need support i think we can work together and sam i think you can you can fill in on here how we can support other organizations yes i i think i think you're absolutely right i think there are two things here there's one with coming up with your hotspots and understanding what they are and then setting some measurable actions to do to do something about them and increase your sustainability and reduce your environmental impact but the whole other area is how do we engage how do we mobilize change how do we incentivize our teams how do we incentivize our suppliers and our clients to take action and i think that's really where companies like drpg can can have an immense valuable effect a couple more questions have just come in as well so um dow how easy was it to engage the rest of the team um with obviously this charter yeah it was actually really simple i mean it was the team that's driven this uh and predominantly majority of the the 40 challenges that we're doing has come from the team uh so the team are incredibly engaged and i think if we didn't do it then we'd have a bit of a problem in the organization so there's been no problem with engagement whatsoever can i just say something there sure i just want to say that the leadership that you've given dell and i've worked with you for 12 years and the leadership you've given has been exemplary and i think it's really an example to any leader in any organization we need leaders to step up and put sustainability at the top of the agenda and secondly and this is what you've done really well is keep it there so um yeah just just a little bit of a word there about your leadership i think it's dessert that was unscripted one other question that's coming we now have the csr charter at drpg so what's next for you guys i think really big for us is to make it work this is not a document that's just going to be fixed and that's it for the next few years it's going to be a dynamic document it will keep moving and changing and switching and adding to and developing as we go on so it's going to be looking for bigger opportunities going forward of how we can make ourselves more sustainable and i think one final one that's um coming is um how can the industry learn from this i think i'm hoping we can we can set a precedent we certainly want to work with the industry we're not in competition when it comes to the this topic we need to collaborate together and actually part of our charter and our commitment is to collaborate with the industry share our ideas share our initiatives and try and bring the industry along with us fantastic any other questions no i think that's it so thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it and how we doing the trees we've got some in the guys are going to carry on planting i'm sure so from us here in hartlebury goodbye [Music] you