The Beehive, located in London, is run by our 2023 Licensee of the Year Finalists, Lee and Keris De Villiers. Lee and Keris have been awarded our Sustainability Champion Award for their pub, The Pig & Whistle, and they have continued to implement highly sustainable actions in their second pub, The Beehive.Across the pub, Lee and Keris have installed LED lighting, and have invested in energy-efficient appliances. All of these have additional timers and sensors installed, to help cut any unwanted energy usage.
As for their waste, all single-use plastics have been cut from the pub, and water usage reduction methods have been put into place, such as efficient cleaning systems for their glass cleaners. All recycling is separated by materials to better ensure everything can be recycled correctly.
Lee and Keris have also introduced an oil recycling scheme, running at both The Beehive and The Pig and Whistle. With this scheme, customers can bring in their used cooking oil, and it’ll be sent off with the pub’s used oil for recycling. Lee and Keris have promoted their SAVE the DRAIN scheme so well that they’ve recycled over 250 litres of oil, and the Wandsworth Council have backed their project, providing them with a grant. The Council have also announced that along with supporting their project, they will fuel and operate Council trucks with the used cooking oil collected from local businesses.
Sustainability is always a high priority topic in staff meetings, making sure that team members know all the actions in place, along with passing on the importance of the pub’s sustainability schemes to customers.
“All the little changes we’ve made add up, but our oil recycling scheme is our most successful and we’ve felt has made the most difference,” says Lee and Keris.
You can visit The Beehive website here