Sustainability Column - Reflecting on RIAT24 and our journey so far
- 29th Jan 2025
Welcome back to my first column of 2025. As I sit in our offices at Douglas Bader House, just outside RAF Fairford to start this column, a colleague reminds me that this year’s RIAT is now less than six months away, which is reason to reflect on the success of last year’s event and the continued efforts we are making on our sustainability journey.
We welcomed over 168,000 people to the showground as well as aircraft from around the world and made our largest ever donation to our parent charity, the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust.
Last summer also saw us host a landmark moment as the Royal Air Force Typhoon display was fuelled by a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) blend. It was great to work alongside the RAF and our headline sponsor BAE Systems to bring this to the show, to me it truly demonstrates the convening power of RIAT and how we are becoming a destination to showcase sustainable aviation and innovation.
As some of you will know, working in sustainability, at times, means an awful lot of data collection and number crunching. Having done that, led by our Sustainability Co-ordinator, Briony Farmer, we were able to see some interesting statistics about RIAT24. As an event, we are making positive progress on our sustainability journey and working hard to make improvements wherever we can. A huge part of sustainability is behaviour change, both internally as an organisation and externally with our stakeholders. We are incredibly grateful to those visitors who have helped us make progress and recognise our achievements so far.
As a team we have managed to:
- Reduce the total amount of waste by 21% from RIAT23 to RIAT24
- Reduce the amount of fuel (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) used in our event generators by 36.5% at RIAT24 compared to RIAT22, which equates to 20,893 litres less - the same as filling fuel tanks for 76 double decker buses!
- Introduce water refilling points across the site, reducing the requirement for thousands of single-use plastic bottles used by our volunteers, contractors and visitors each year
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it provides context as to what we have achieved so far, and with data capture and measurement becoming more embedded throughout the RAFCTE we know there is more to come. We are committed to reporting our progress in more detail over the course of the next year and look forward to sharing further details with you.
Looking ahead, we are working hard to make further improvements to RIAT and our day-to-day operations. Our internal Sustainability Working Group consisting of department representatives meets monthly to discuss all things sustainability, we will share more from them in the coming months.
After a successful trial of a ‘Liftshare’ scheme with our volunteers in 2024, we are pleased to open it to our visitors travelling to the event. The award-winning car sharing platform is free to use and enables individuals to share their journey reducing the number of vehicles travelling to the event thus reducing our environmental impact. If you are interested in sharing your journey, please find our page here.
As always, thank you for your continued support. Everyone here at Douglas Bader House is looking forward to keeping you updated as we approach RIAT25. Make sure that you stay tuned to this column for updates from sustainable aviation, sustainability at events and RAFCTE operations.
