How Keep Britain Tidy uses a shared platform to manage over 300 certification applications efficiently, supporting tourism establishments on their journey to Green Key International recognition.

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Executive summary

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Keep Britain Tidy, working with Green Key International, needed a way to scale sustainable tourism by certifying more establishments without overloading teams with manual workflows. By adopting BeCause's Certification Co-pilot, the organization now manages over 300 Green Key applications in one digital environment, accelerating processing while improving oversight and data quality. The result is a smoother experience for applicants, more efficient coordination for the certifier, and a stronger foundation for tracking real-world sustainability impact in England.

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As Green Key Manager for England Louise Carr Merino explains:

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“Certification Co-pilot has allowed us to streamline how we process applications for Green Key certification. The online platform provides one system for applicants, auditors and us as the certifier.

The transition from manual application and processing to a digital system has been incredibly smooth and the ongoing support from the team at BeCause has enabled Keep Britain Tidy to elevate the sustainability journey of tourism establishments applying for Green Key.”

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Sustainable tourism at scale: Green Key in England

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Keep Britain Tidy is a leading environmental charity working to improve places and protect the environment across England, including through sustainable tourism initiatives. As the National Operator of Green Key International, it helps establishments meet internationally recognized sustainability standards. Scaling certification across hundreds of hotels and accommodations requires consistent criteria, data and auditing processes, yet much of this work traditionally depended on fragmented spreadsheets, documents and email-based applications, making it harder to track progress and ensure consistency.

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Without a unified system, the team had to juggle internal storage for applications, separate tools for allocating auditors, and a shared email inbox managed by multiple people—often resulting in confusion, duplicated effort and a lack of end to end visibility on each application’s journey.

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The challenge: Scaling certification without burning out the team

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Keep Britain Tidy was looking for a future-proof application and auditing platform that would make certification management easier and more efficient while maintaining the rigor of Green Key's standards.

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Key challenges included:

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• Time-consuming manual application handling and data entry.
• Limited real-time visibility into where each establishment was in the certification journey.
• Coordinating multiple stakeholders (Keep Britain Tidy team, Green Key International, applicants, external auditors) across different tools.

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These bottlenecks made it difficult to move from tens of applicants to hundreds without adding significant administrative overhead. Without a digital application system, handling 300 applications would likely have led to delays, higher stress levels and increased risk of applications slipping through the cracks.

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Objectives

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Together, Keep Britain Tidy and BeCause set out to:

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• Enable applicants to complete and submit Green Key applications through a single, user-friendly platform.
• Reduce manual, repetitive tasks for certification staff and supporting partners.
• Gain real time insight into applicant progress, bottlenecks and overall pipeline health.
• Maintain or improve the quality and consistency of applications and audits despite a higher volume.

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In short, the ambition was to make sustainability certification manageable at scale—without losing the human, supportive relationship with tourism establishments that are working hard to improve their impact.

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Certification Co-pilot

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To achieve these goals, Keep Britain Tidy implemented Certification Co-pilot, a solution designed specifically to streamline certification journeys in tourism. Certification Co-pilot offers an end to end platform where applicants, certifiers and partners work from the same data, processes and timelines. For Keep Britain Tidy, Certification Co-pilot also connects directly to Green Key International's database to upload certified establishments and consumption data, ensuring alignment between national operations and global records.

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When evaluating options, Keep Britain Tidy considered using the application tool used by Green Key International and other national operators, as well as building their own system in house. However, at the time there was no active API integration between that tool and the BeCause data hub that already hosted Green Key International’s records. Building a new system internally would have required significant time and investment.

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Instead, Certification Co-pilot offered a ready to use solution that eliminated duplication of work, integrated data directly into the international database, and could be implemented quickly and cost effectively. Key stakeholders included Keep Britain Tidy's Green Key team and auditors, applicants, and BeCause's product and implementation team, collaborating to configure criteria, align processes and support applicants through the transition.

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Implementation: From launch to 300+ applications

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The implementation focused on making the certification journey as intuitive as possible for applicants while giving Keep Britain Tidy the control and visibility they needed.

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Onboarding and setup

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Green Key's criteria and workflows were configured in Certification Co pilot, including application forms, evidence requirements and audit steps. This ensured that the digital journey reflected the rigor of Green Key standards while simplifying how criteria and supporting documentation were presented to establishments.

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Application manager

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Establishments now access online applications where all criteria can be answered directly, with comments and evidence uploaded for each section. Applicants no longer have to manage multiple Word documents and email threads; instead, everything sits in one place. Keep Britain Tidy’s team can see progress in real time, identify where help is needed and support applicants in completing submissions on time—without juggling multiple tools and documents.

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Support from Keep Britain Tidy

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To make the transition inclusive, the team hosted video calls and webinars with hotel groups and environmental managers from individual establishments. These sessions walked applicants through the new online process step by step, ensuring they felt confident using the platform regardless of their technical experience. Most queries were resolved quickly, and once applicants accessed the application form, they easily understood what was required

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Audit manager

Keep Britain Tidy uses Certification Co-pilot to process different audit types, allocate external auditors and track audit outcomes centrally. For on site audits, auditors can review applications and evidence before visits, flag missing documentation and request clarifications directly within the system. For desktop audits, the same two way workflow allows auditors and applicants to collaborate efficiently from initial review to final decision.

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Feedback and iteration

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Analysis and user feedback are used to refine forms, communications and guidance, improving the experience for later waves of applicants. This includes clarifying where comments are needed to support “yes” or “no” answers and explaining why monthly consumption data must be entered into specific fields rather than uploaded as standalone spreadsheets, paving the way for future benchmarking and analytics.

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Through this process, Keep Britain Tidy successfully invited more than 300 applicants into the Certification Co-pilot environment and processed over 80 applications from data collection to submission and auditing in only six months since the platform launched in September 2025.

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“The online application system has allowed us to streamline our internal processes, and our team can process a higher volume of applications than previously within the same timeframe. There are fewer manual steps involved as all details for the application are within one system.” - Louise Carr‑Merino, Green Key Manager for England

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The results: Turning digital workflows into real-world impact

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Using Certification Co-pilot, Keep Britain Tidy achieved tangible operational and strategic outcomes:

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• Scale and throughput: More than 300 applications are being processed in one coordinated environment, proving that high volume certification can be managed without linear increases in administrative workload.
• Reduced manual work: Automation of repetitive tasks cut down on time spent copying data between systems and documents. The team no longer needs to save applications and upload evidence to separate folders or manage multiple email threads for each applicant.
• Better support: Centralized records make it easier to see where each establishment is in the journey, what evidence has been submitted and where follow up is needed—enabling the team to provide support when requested.
• Improved quality and consistency: Standardized workflows and centralized data reduce the risk of missing or inconsistent information, while the ability to link evidence directly to criteria points makes reviews smoother and more transparent.
• Stronger data foundation: Automated transfer of certified establishments and consumption data into Green Key International's database strengthens reporting and lays the groundwork for future benchmarking and impact analytics.

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Although it is difficult to assign exact time savings per application—since this varies with the volume of evidence and comments—Keep Britain Tidy’s team is clear that the review and audit process is now significantly more efficient and better structured than the previous manual system.

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Lessons learned

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From Keep Britain Tidy's perspective, several lessons stand out:

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• Centralizing the journey matters: Bringing applications, audits and tracking into one platform reduces friction for both applicants and certifiers, and helps ensure that everyone works from the same up to date information.
• Data reuse is powerful: Integrating directly with the Green Key International database avoids duplication of effort and ensures that what is captured once in the application journey can flow through to global records and future reporting.
• Visibility enables support: Centralized overviews make it easier to identify common bottlenecks, such as missing comments or incomplete consumption data, so that the team can step in early and help applicants move forward with confidence.
• Technology and standards must co‑evolve: Feedback loops between applicants, Keep Britain Tidy and BeCause help refine both the certification process and the technology supporting it over time, ensuring the system keeps pace with real‑world needs.

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Looking back, the team highlights how smoothly the transition from a manual to a digital application system went. All establishments were moved onto the online platform within three months, and in hindsight the only change they would make would be to communicate the shift even earlier to larger hotel groups, giving them more time to plan renewal applications around internal timelines.

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Future outlook: scaling impact across sustainable tourism

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Keep Britain Tidy's use of Certification Co-pilot shows how an environmental charity can turn sustainability ambitions into measurable change at scale in tourism. With over 300 applications already being processed, the foundation is in place to extend certification to more establishments, add new accommodation types and expand into additional sustainability programmes.

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As the partnership evolves, Certification Co-pilot's integration capabilities can support ongoing monitoring, new applicant cohorts and deeper collaboration between Keep Britain Tidy, Green Key International and industry partners. This creates a more resilient, data driven ecosystem for sustainable tourism—one where certifiers, operators and establishments can move forward together, using shared insight to drive continuous improvement.

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