Aviva taking a stand on sustainability at BIBA 2024

Authored by Aviva

Aviva has been a recognised leader on sustainability issues for decades. It’s a fundamental part of our strategy and integral to what we do as a business. From acting on climate change, building stronger communities, and embedding good governance across our business and supply chain, we set ourselves big ambitions. We know that what we do today, decides what’s possible tomorrow.  

Aviva has made a commitment to be Net Zero across our operations and supply chain by 2030, along with our underwriting and investment activity by 2040. We've set Science-Based Targets aligned to a 1.5-degree pathway for our operations, supply chain and investments, and our climate goals will be delivered with an overall £100m investment into UK and Ireland nature-based solutions by 2030, contributing towards the tackling the challenges on biodiversity and nature. 

Sustainable Partnerships

We're working with the world’s leading global environmental charity WWF as their lead partner in the insurance and pensions sector. We've made a commitment to donate £100m to UK and Ireland Nature based solutions, already partnering with The Wildlife Trust contributing a £38m donation to help restore Britain’s lost rainforests, and a £10m investment over 5 years to support woodland creation and peatland restoration projects in partnership with Woodland Trust. The funding aims to deliver carbon removal, boost air quality and improve biodiversity through woodland creation and peat restoration. Woodland management and creation also play an important role in mitigating the worst effects of extreme weather events, such as floods and wildfires, which can devastate people’s homes and livelihoods. We're proud to play our role to re-establish temperate rainforests in the UK, helping the UK become the world’s most climate-ready large economy.

It’s through our partnership that we’re proud to welcome the Woodland Trust to the BIBA Conference 2024 for their first BIBA event. Stop by their stand G87 to speak to the team and find out how you and your business can get involved.

From the ways we work with our partners and communities, to the ways we show up at events like the BIBA conference, we’re mindful of our impact, and taking positive steps to be responsible and sustainable, so this year at BIBA it’s not just our recycled cups on the stand that have a story to tell - come and talk to our team on stand C20 to find out more.

So how do we measure our impact?

We’re using carbon reporting tool Event Decision to assess the impact that our BIBA stand and attending this event has on the environment. By understanding the impact of our stand fabrication, transportation and people attending the BIBA event we can look to reduce our impact year on year.

The Aviva team hosting our stand at BIBA this year play an important role in our BIBA sustainability mission. The likes of travel, accommodation and hospitality will be considered, making sustainable choices on travel to reduce our footprint. We measure our total transportation and travel distance so we can calculate this as part of our overall group travel emissions.

Getting closer to Net Zero by 2040

Our sustainable choices at BIBA 2024 lead the way for others to follow. We hope that brokers, businesses, and others in the insurance industry join us in our approach and start to make those small changes that contribute to our net zero future.

Want to know more about how we’re operating sustainably for our people, our shareholders and for society? Download the Aviva sustainability report for 2023 here.

Join our Fringe session on Sustainability at BIBA

‘Supporting brokers (and their clients) on sustainability’

Thursday 16 May, 12:00 – 12:40pm

This year’s Fringe sessions will be set in the bustling and vibrant exhibition hall. We’re co-hosting this session to talk about the importance of sustainability for businesses and the tools on offer to support you and your clients on this journey. Join the session to hear from Simon Burkitt, Sustainability Lead, Aviva UK General Insurance, alongside experts from Weightmans and Flotilla. Find out more here.

“We’re excited to take part in this Fringe session at this year’s BIBA Conference. Our industry has a unique role to play in ensuring the transition to a low-carbon future, and we’re here to support brokers with their sustainability journey. In particular, we’ll be sharing how our recently launched Sustainable Business Coach can help with making brokers’ businesses fit for the future from an environmental, social and governance point of view. Sustainability is a fundamental part of our strategy and by working together with our broker partners we hope to make an even bigger impact. We look forward to meeting brokers at this year’s event to share more.” Simon Burckitt, Sustainability Lead.

Find out more

Broker sustainability support

Our sustainability hub on Aviva Broker brings together helpful guidance and information to support brokers in becoming sustainable and climate resilient, as well as more information on Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) and how our products are evolving to tackle the ever-changing customer demand.

Launched last year, our Sustainable Business Coach tool can help with making your business fit for the future. Get a demo of the tool on our BIBA stand or follow the button below to find out more.

Find out more

Our BIBA stand – Lifecycle thinking

From flooring to furniture and graphic finishes, there’s a lot that goes into our stand at BIBA each year. Each component serves a different need, and together these pieces come together to give our Brokers and colleagues the best possible experience each year. Working with our stand design and build partners, Image Experiential, we’ve created a sustainably focused stand that provides a great experience for brokers and our team at the event.

We’ve highlighted some examples below, but a lifecycle thinking mindset has been applied to our exhibition stand, from design through to build. For example, by using and reusing strong, durable materials like aluminium frameworks and hardwood floor structures, our stand has extended the life of materials which require higher energy to procure, manufacture and transport. With some being reused for decades, the lifecycle of these materials has been extended significantly, and better yet, less durable and less appropriate materials haven't been used time after time to reach the same result. That’s lifecycle thinking in action, and it’s helping us take a real stand on sustainability.

Flooring

Made from hard wearing and fast growing European plywood from responsibly managed sources, our flooring structures have been retained, repaired, and reused since the 1990s. Swaps from vinyl laminates to chipboard flooring and the likes of recyclable carpet options have been implemented to make sure that the flooring options on our stand give a true foundation of sustainability that makes sense in the temporary world of events, blending both reusability and recycling in tandem.

Just like our flooring, our stand build team have retained a core inventory of stand structures since the 1990s. Building on the lifecycle thinking behind every project, these structures need to be strong, safe and sturdy, but remain largely unseen in their different creative uses.

This means all these architectural components are maintained, reused, and repaired to extend their lifespan across multiple clients and events.

90-95% of the aluminium components, subject to wear and safe usage, have been retained since Aviva’s first purchase in 2013. By using materials like aluminium sensibly and creatively, we first make sure any usage can extend the higher energy required to initially produce aluminium. However, when these components do reach the end of their useful life, aluminium benefits from being fully recyclable and reformable in new components without any loss of quality. Better still, recycling aluminium extrusions typically requires far less energy than initial manufacture, making recycling of these elements even more important for a sustainable stand today and tomorrow. 

At BIBA 2023, all the small plants were ‘rehomed’ amongst staff or associated persons so these still live on in offices and homes.

This year we’re planning to do the same with a selection of native plant species, again selected for their resistance to stress, natural occurrence in the UK and ability to live on beyond the days of BIBA, whilst adding a little biophilia to our event. We've also commissioned a preserved moss wall panel which will last into future events and provide a newer take on stand décor without negative environmental impact. 

Keeping our stand design distinctively ‘Aviva’ is a key part of our success at events like BIBA. We want brokers to use our yellow brand assets as a beacon to visit us, but how do we customise our look without compromising on sustainability?

Once again, understanding lifecycles supports smarter applications of branding. Where a logo or brand asset is likely to be consistent, we can typically plan to reuse these decorative components.

Choosing the right materials for custom structures and shapes means that using them only once or twice is already balancing the lifecycle effectively. Fast growing soft woods, recycled composite materials and boards help make custom features far less costly to the environment. Even using plastics in a few areas is the responsible thing to do, with these materials offering flexibility, durability and cleanliness that is hard to match, making sure that they're not treated disposably. In most cases, even these components are used numerous times, making their way to other Aviva events like the Airmic conference.  

Our stand graphics are all produced via UV printing. This means that there are no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and no need for heat plates or chemical processes. Instead, ink is cured instantly with UV light for a durable and vibrant finish, reducing the energy required to produce even the largest of graphics. The majority of our graphics are also made from a recycled polyester fabric which uses reclaimed plastic bottles to form a high quality printable and further recyclable media.

Our stand build partners Image Experiential are also taking the stand build process a step further when it comes to sustainability. Committed to honestly acknowledging the green gap in events as they work to close it for good, they partner with Ecologi to fund a range of climate positive programmes across the UK and the rest of the world. These projects extend to carbon capture, reduction and avoidance, as well as funding rewilding, community projects and education, accounting for all travel and installation impacts, as well as the remaining 5 to 10% of a project that can't yet be reused or recycled.

Find out more about how we’re taking a stand on sustainability, including our support to you and your clients by talking to the team at BIBA 2024 15-16 May in Manchester.