AN EVENTS company which works with stars including Tom Jones is supporting a tree planting programme to offset its carbon footprint.
Cardiff-based Orchard has partnered with Coed Hills Rural Artspace, an eco-friendly sustainable community set in a forest in the nearby Vale of Glamorgan, to create an actual orchard on a hill overlooking the sea.
The firm is committed to planting at least 200 trees a year, with a third being fruit trees.
A tree will be planted for every completed job over £5,000, with clients also able to add their own tree at the same time.
Orchard’s business development director Jim Carpenter said: “In the face of climate change, we wanted to find a sustainable initiative that was realistic, attainable, scalable and local, so that our team, our clients, friends and families could see tangible benefits for themselves just 10 miles from our offices as the scheme grows.”
The firm works across media and events, providing PR services to clients including the Welsh Government and Aston Martin, as well as staging live events which this year will include concerts planned with Sir Tom Jones, Olly Murs and Catfish and the Bottlemen.
The UK events industry, in the year before the pandemic, produced an estimated 1.2 billion kgs of Co2 and Orchard’s events director Alastair Wilson said the shift to online events over the past year hasn’t meant its environmental impact has been massively reduced.
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“Moving events online now requires yet more data centres and server farms all fed by mostly fossil fuels power supplies. This needs a collective industry response, and at Orchard we’re making our own small steps in the right direction.”
The initiative is a step towards B Corp Certification, the global cultural shift to redefine success in business, and build a more transparent, socially accountable, inclusive and sustainable economy and Orchard, which employs 50 people at its Cardiff headquarters, will also will enable staff to become eco volunteers on company time.
This article originally appeared on our sister site The National.
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