The O2

The O2, the world's most successful music and entertainment venue, today announced that it has been awarded Gold accreditation by the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS)*. The announcement comes just hours before the iconic London venue is due to dim its lights and stand in darkness as part of this weekend's global WWF Earth Hour activity.

In order to scoop the GTBS Gold award, The O2 was assessed by a qualified grading advisor against a rigorous set of criteria which covered a range of areas such as energy and water efficiency, waste management and biodiversity.

As the largest site in the green tourism business programme, the judges at GTBS were impressed by The O2's ongoing commitment to the environment; such as the energy monitoring systems that have been put in place and a programme to reduce the waste that is inevitably generated by such a large venue. The judges singled out The O2's continued efforts to encourage its visitors to travel to and from the venue by public transport for high-praise. The marketing campaigns and messaging that accompany every ticket sold has resulted in over 70% of visitor journeys being made by tube, bus, bicycle or the Thames Clipper service.

In addition, The O2 has worked with its commercial partners to support its green initiatives. One high profile example being The O2's partnership with car manufacturer Nissan to promote its electric car, the Leaf. Electric charging points have been installed around the site whilst Nissan has chosen The O2 as the venue for the Nissan Innovation Station, a dedicated educational area which demonstrates how concept technology of today is leading to the greener cars of tomorrow.

On being given the Gold award, Alex Hill, Senior Executive Director of AEG Europe, owners and operators of The O2, said: "This Gold award reflects how seriously The O2 is about building our environmental sustainability."

"Our vision is for The O2 to be seen as not just the world's most environmentally aware music and entertainment venue, but as a place that other businesses look to as a source of best practice for environmental management."

On Saturday 26th March at 8.30pm (GMT), The O2 will be plunged into darkness as it turns off all its non-essential lighting as part of WWF Earth Hour. Irish rockers The Script, who will be playing in front of 20,000 screaming fans in The O2 arena when the lights go out, have given their blessing to The O2's involvement in Earth Hour.

These initiatives are part of the AEG 1EARTH program commitment to the environment across all owned and operated facilities worldwide.

"AEG represents a unique intersection of facilities management, live entertainment and sports management and programming" said Tim Leiweke, AEG CEO. "Our AEG 1EARTH program signifies not only our commitment to understanding and reducing our environmental impact, but our desire to help our industry identify opportunities to merge economic growth with environmental responsibility"