NDML and Carla Denyer at the BARBI Trade Show
The NDML team attended the BARBI Trade Show in Bristol. It was a fantastic event, featuring top distributors, independent businesses and key speakers.
We talked to Carla Denyer, Green Party Leader, who was speaking at the event about sustainability in the nightlife economy. We wanted to gauge her unfiltered thoughts as part of our new Nightlife Unscripted series.
Watch the video here:
NDML talks to Carla Denyer
“I’m national leader of the green party and I’m based here in Bristol where I’m also local city councillor and I’m standing to be the city’s first Green MP.”
When asked about their most recent experience of nightlife, they said:
“The last time I went out was to Nadu, which is a really nice independent Sri Lankan restaurant here in Bristol on Stokes Croft. I had a really nice dosa which was about 3 foot in diameter.”
When asked what they believe the trending theme of 2024 will be for nightlife, they said:
“I’ve just done a panel discussion and it’s clear sustainability is going to be a trending topic in 2024. There were people from all different angles of the nighttime economy asking questions and understandably raising concerns. They understand the need to decarbonise; they want to; but they don’t feel they’re getting enough support from the government, especially the micro-sized businesses.”
When asked what they would do if they were made Prime Minister for a day, they said:
“There’s a lot of different things that I would like to do if I were made prime minister, one of them is supporting small to medium enterprises to do more in decarbonising their operations. In the Green Party we’ve been lobbying for the Government to provide green transition grants; there is some money available already but there is not enough, and it is particularly hard for small businesses to access. So it’s about making sure that to help us decarbonise the whole economy, we’re not just using stick, we are also using a bit of carrot.”
They also added:
“One of the points I made in the panel discussion on sustainability is: I encouraged businesses to get active – not just within the green business organisations such as the SRA (Sustainable Restaurant Association), but also get active within the mainstream business organisation because they have the ear of government. So if you want [the government] to, for example, lower carbon emissions, then lobby through non-green business organisations to call for that. So as a little example: the CBI lobbied government to provide a tax break on new machinery. The Greens had been lobbying government to provide a tax-break specifically on energy-efficient new machinery. But they didn’t do solely energy-efficient machinery, they did all new machinery. If there had been more green-leaning businesses in the CBI then maybe we could have gotten a better deal that would have helped businesses save money and go green.”
More From Nightlife Unscripted
Much needs to be done across the whole scope of the nightlife economy. Learn more about the other opinions and motivations from night time industry leaders here