This past weekend, we attended the P.E.A. Awards in Marylebone, London, the UK’s leading sustainability awards. The Green Carpet Awards event, now in its 11th year, honours the individuals and teams behind the products, services and businesses that are changing the face of our planet.
We had the opportunity to showcase Briiv on its largest scale yet as the World’s Most Sustainable Air Filter! As the only product displayed at the event, we were given the chance to set up Briiv in the lobby earlier in the day before the awards ceremony. This allowed us to talk to people, answer questions and show how Briiv functions. We had a lot of great interaction with people wanting to know more about Briiv and its involvement in the awards event. Mostly, we got the chance to try Briiv at a large event with hundreds of people, providing safety and cleaner air for everyone in attendance.
As the set up and preparation for the evening got underway, we finalised all of the tables with a Briiv Air Filter centrepiece. 32 Briiv units stood pride of place on every table, dotting the room with their vibrant green moss. All of the units were stood on their own biodegradable tubes to eliminate any use of plastic materials. We found this set up process easy and straight forward as the Air Filters require very little set up and maintenance overall. When everyone began to file in and take their seats, one guest said to us, “I love the design, it looks like it was made for this event!” Being able to see Briiv fit into its environment so well was definitely a highlight for us.
Why did we decide to take Briiv on the road to the awards?
As things have begun to return to some sort of pre-pandemic normalcy, events like this have been able to go ahead. However, we know that this does not mean the pandemic is over and there is still a need to continue to think about our health and safety and that of others too. With over 300 people in attendance, and in a venue with minimal ventilation/filtration devices, having a way to clean the air in the room felt like a must. We felt that Briiv being present tackled the overarching concern of having so many people in one space. Also, having the Filters visible on every table meant people could visually see what was cleaning their air and acting as a protection. Without too much speculation, we would like to think this added to the easy-going and positive atmosphere on the night, simply be being a visual point of safety, as well doing this in the most sustainable way possible.
Bringing Briiv to the P.E.A. Awards gave us the opportunity to help reduce any harmful particles in the air and help the health of all in attendance. One guest said to us “I was a little nervous about being in a room with so many people but didn’t want to miss the event. When I found out there was going to be an air filter on my table, I did feel a lot safer.” Studies have shown that airborne viruses like Covid-19 can attach themselves to other airborne particles like dust particles. Briiv’s matrix filter and activated carbon filters are designed to remove dust particles from the air. While we can’t claim that the Briiv Air Filter can remove Covid-19 particles from your air, we can say that it successfully filters the dust particles from the air which may be attached to Covid-19 particles. With so many in attendance at the awards event, we’re happy to have been able to provide some level of safety.
In her keynote speech Atossa Soltani, founder and board president of Amazon Watch, mentioned how “future generations are depending on our bold and courageous actions today to shift our life-blind economic system to one that is life seeing and life affirming.” As a company that wants to make a positive change, we were fed up with sustainability being treated as an afterthought in design. Our commitment is to the circular design process and we believe Briiv truly represents this.
A main highlight of the night for us was being able to see real world interaction with Briiv and sharing our commitment to circular design with so many people. While we are shipping units out and love seeing people unboxing their Briiv’s, it’s not quite the same as being in a room full of people who share your vision interacting and talking and about your product. Being able to share Briiv with so many people was a great experience for us and a definite highlight of the Briiv journey so far.
Of course, there were some difficulties involved in bringing Briiv to so many people for over 8 hours. As Briiv runs on a USB connection and contains no rechargeable battery of any kind, we had to find a way to keep all of the units powered throughout day. This meant we had to take a power brick for each unit, which had to stay connected the whole night for the units to run. Doing this meant we had to calculate and time how and when was best to use the power bricks. We’re happy to say this all ran smoothly, even if it did add to the difficulty of the process.
Taking Briiv on the road and showcasing it an event like the P.E.A. Awards was a great experience for us. Overall, we felt that we delivered what Briiv provides, which is cleaner and healthier air for all in attendance, in the most sustainable way possible.
