British, seasonal, plant-forward dishes, locally sourced and regeneratively produced ingredients are everywhere on menus; starters and desserts are vegan.

This year, sustainably-sourced kelp featured on the starters from Câr-y-Môr - Wales first community owned regenerative seaweed farm, which uses zero input farming methods to improve the coastal environment.

Bread rolls, meanwhile, were made with flour from British regenerative food and farming business Wildfarmed– which, from 2025, is Levy’s flour of choice across the business.

Local London honey and seasonal rhubarb featured on the desserts. All dishes are labelled with their carbon impact and the arena menu included a specially signposted “Reduced Carbon Main Course” (Laverbread leek Wellington with plant-based cheese arancini) alongside a main course of Venison.

Venison is also a great sustainable choice: a ‘lean and clean’ red meat that’s brilliant for biodiversity, has significantly lower carbon impact than beef and is nutritionally rich and packed with antioxidents.

The meat came from three starred Michelin Chef, Brett Graham (The Ledbury) – whose estate deer are raised using a low input farming model with no medication, concentrates or imported feed.

“One of the main challenges with championing seasonal product is the time of year The BRITs takes place, comments Lucy Fulford, Operations Manager at Payne & Gunter. The awards which come right at the end of the winter mean “we are looking at introducing more pickling and preserving,” she says.

Sustainable packaging solutions are also to be found in the retail section of hospitality, where Levy to-go food is served in Earthshot prize winner, Notpla’s seaweed-based packaging. Life cycle analysis shows this to be an impressive 39 %potential CO2e reduction over the conventional packaging previously used and is another example of a project first used at the BRITs and now standard use at The O2.

With an aim to reduce carbon impact ever more each year, sometimes continuous improvement may become counterintuitive. 

The same goes for printing the BRIT Awards programmes provided to guests on the night. “We found we were gathering up loads at the end of the night,” says Matt, noting that the brochure is also available in digital form.

Closer analysis of the actual numbers enabled the team to reduce the print run. So, the impact of printing them has now been halved and they are now also printed on recycled paper.

Any leftover brochures left around the Arena are taken to the After Show Party by the Sustainability Team so that guests can take them as a souvenir and avoid any going to waste.

“What I’m most proud of is that we have taken the initiative, we haven’t waited for somebody to tell us what to do,” says Bethan James, Payne & Gunter Managing Director.

"We have already changed our practices so that Julie’s Bicycle (sustainability consultants with a long-standing partnership with The BRIT Awards to support their sustainability efforts across the awards including in hospitality) say things like ‘you’re already doing so much good work already on the sustainability front.”

“We listen and learn, and importantly, we act on the findings of the impact report each year.  Matt is our BRITs warrior, whose experience in this area is second to none.  The whole team should feel really proud as we consciously make this a priority across all our delivery.”

So, is there more to be done to improve sustainability here? “There will always be something," smiles Matt.

“We’ve done a lot, but we’re always looking for the next thing or innovation to make that extra bit of progress."

There are plans to continue to work with chefs to further reduce the carbon footprint of the food served, move into making an impact in hospitality areas P&G look after which are outside the area, as well as put more effort into communicating, successes more effectively to raise awareness of the work Payne & Gunter – powered by Levy – is doing.

And then he is gone. Back to check on the food waste buckets.