Sustainable event delivery involves scaling back to the very roots of a project, all the way to its conception, and asking stakeholders, ‘what is the purpose of this event’. Why are you hosting an event, what do you need to get out of it, and how can you achieve those results in a truly sustainable manner? Consider first and foremost, does this need to be an event, or can the objectives be successfully achieved using online digital tools? Perhaps sharing data and receiving feedback is the key outcome, in which case strategic online workshops could be the most cost and carbon effective tool. However, if your goal is gathering people together and sharing an experience, there is no substitute for a live event. Whatever the project, beginning with the mindset of sustainability, considering all social, environmental and economic factors, ensures it starts off on the right foot, and will make following the rest of this guide an easy journey ahead.

In the same way your finance department has policies about spending limits and signing authorities, your events department needs a policy for what is expected in terms of sustainability when implementing events. A sustainability policy for a live event outlines specific strategies and commitments that minimise environmental impact, such as reducing waste, conserving energy, and promoting responsible sourcing. Overall, the policy aims to ensure that the event's activities are conducted in a manner that is socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. Any sustainability policy should align with the broader organisational, long-term company goals so that the delivery of an event is contributing towards goal objectives. A well-aligned business model would see the company strategy woven into individual policies, and in our industry, right down to how events are being organised. Every policy will look different depending on the type of events you’re organising, but try to weave sustainability into all of your project documents to ensure that it is considered in every decision making step, by all stakeholders involved. We welcome you to use this guide to assist with building your policy, and what your non-negotiables in event design and delivery might be. Environmental Venues with an energy efficient plan and/or renewable energy source. No single-use, disposable items. Catering ingredients from within a 30-mile radius. Agree management streams for any leftover waste (i.e. composting facilities or plastic film). Contracts with venues and vendors must contain sustainable agreements, such as provision of data for carbon emissions measurement. Buildings which are LEED or BREEAM accredited. Social 50% of vendors and/or suppliers are locally based, within 30 miles of the event venue. 5% of event revenue going towards a charitable community cause. Networking activities must be accessible for all. Economic Achieve minimum revenue targets from event attendance.

Contracts are an under-explored opportunity to enforce sustainable goals and develop sustainable initiatives during a project or event. We’ve likely all been in the position of having a sales manager promise us the world, only to then find out from the operations manager after signing the contract that half of it isn’t possible, but a detailed contract mitigates this risk. As we saw during COVID-19, flexible cancellation clauses moved from unacceptable to the norm, and in our pathway to a sustainable future, sustainable contract clauses should be next. Clauses will vary and look different based upon your business objectives and goals, but consider: Carbon emissions data is to be shared between parties. Emissions data helps to provide concrete statistics to the impact you’re making, and provides that baseline/benchmark to compare yourself to both current standards, and your progress in the future. Making the provision of this data mandatory when negotiating contracts highlights the importance of the task to your supply chain, and ensures you have accurate measurements when reporting. It’s a give and take, if your venue is able to measure energy usage in your occupied spaces and give a detailed breakdown on catering waste, they may ask you in-turn to share how your audience travelled to the venue. Mutual agreements to remove single-use items from the event. That means no take-away coffee cups for rushed refreshment breaks (see section, sustainable event design…), and likewise from the producer, no giveaway swag wrapped in plastic that’s likely to be thrown away before delegates leave the building. Group accommodation note for sheets and towel changing only on every 3rd day. It’s important to note that for many global corporations and venues, such as Hilton, Marriott, and Accor, amending or even issuing an addendum to a contract takes a long time. This needs to be factored into your supply chain management and we recommend allowing at least an additional month for both parties to have agreed on the intent to create a sustainable event.

They say your success often depends on the group of peers you choose to spend time with, and this relationship could not be more true when it comes to the role of your supply chain, such as venues and vendors, in running successful sustainable events. Venue Sourcing & Certifications There are an abundance of venue accreditations out there, Green Key, Earth Check, LEED, BREEAM, Green Tourism, GSTC and ECOSmart to name a few, all claiming to represent a venue paving the way to a sustainable future. This can be a confusing and often misleading landscape for event planners, and it’s important to remember that whilst many have accomplished zero waste or entirely clean energy, we cannot rest on our laurels with the ever-changing landscape and imminent regulatory reporting requirements. Look beyond the label of accreditations and ask the questions relating to what’s important to you during your venue search. Non-negotiable items for your business may be: Energy efficiency Smart sensored lighting that turns off automatically, reduced energy usage LED lights, or insulating methods that reduce pressure on air cons and heating systems. This could mean renewable energy too. Does the venue have solar panels, or are they purchasing electricity from renewable sources? Local catering We’ll dig into this more in the “Catering” section. Location Consider whether the venue is serviced by public transport, or bicycle parking, enabling high attendance without a high volume of individual cars on the road. Alternatively, venues with EV charging points in the car park allow for clean car travel. Not forgetting to look at your audience profile, where are they travelling from and is this venue appropriate for the majority? Consider adding shuttles from nearby train stations or airports. Transparent data Any claims made by a venue should be backed up with data, and a venue proud of its sustainable initiatives has nothing to hide. The Los Angeles Convention Centre, for example, boasts its green initiatives clearly on its website for any prospective event manager to see. Considerations of the Local Environment and Ecosystem A great example of a venue doing it right is the Vancouver Convention Centre. Hidden amongst the skyline here is an amazing 6-acre living roof. This space acts as a sanctuary for city wildlife, controls and absorbs rainwater and also helps to insulate the building, reducing the need for energy in heating or cooling. Supply Chain Management Venue sourcing is often given much more time and energy than supply chain management in producing events. However, we’ve decided to combine the two in this section as really, they should be treated with equal importance. Vetting In the same way you vet potential venues, you should be vetting your suppliers and conducting thorough research into potential partners before collaborating on projects. The goals and objectives of not only your event, but wider company strategy, should be made clear in initial meetings with potential suppliers so both parties can assess suitability of working together. It’s entirely appropriate to ask questions centred around: Their ethics and how they operate as a business The groups they employ and initiatives/perks offered to staff Their own sustainability policies and goals How they are involved in their local community Other businesses they may be closely affiliated with A great example of how communicating openly and honestly with suppliers can lead to highly successful collaborations is an initiative between Timberland shoes and Omni United, a tyre manufacturer and distributor. Once Omni customers purchased replacement tyres, their old ones were shipped to a recycling facility that turned them into crumbed rubber and eventually, into Timberland shoe soles. Timberland president Stewart Whitney said: “An outdoor lifestyle brand and an automotive industry leader may, at first blush, seem unlikely partners – yet our shared values have [proven] that sustainability can be so much more than a theory.” Comparisons You’d never just look at one venue before making a decision on where to host your event, so why would you do the same for a rental, production, or speaker service? In order to act in the most sustainable way, this comparison goes far beyond cost and should look at things like; their employee experience, if they pay a living wage, do they give back to their local community, how do they reduce waste in providing their service or product. The more finite details you can discuss with a potential supplier, the better you’ll be able to assess if the partnership will work for both of you in the long-term. One area that will clearly show a symbiotic opportunity would be a supplier's sustainable policies and plans…

Venue sourcing looks at an individual property within a location, but location sourcing itself has a whole different spectrum of considerations to evaluate a sustainable destination. A great place to start if you’re only just beginning your destination evaluation journey, is the SDG Index. The SDG Index essentially ranks UN member countries according to their progress towards achieving all 17 of the outlined Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). Finland, Sweden, and Denmark take the podium places, however, if you’re looking to dig deeper into a destination when it comes to events, take a look at the GDS Index. The Global Destination Sustainability (GDS) Index integrates the SDGs into an evaluation programme that looks specifically at making tourism and events more sustainable. It describes itself as envisioning “thriving places and communities activated by regenerative tourism and events”, and looks into the cities, towns, and regions, rather than broad countries. Through benchmarking, assessments, and consulting, the index provides an example of best practices and drives improvements to destination sustainability. If we take a look at Barcelona, for example, one of Europe’s hot spots for business events, we can see that they: Promote cycling, electric vehicles and public transport with low CO2 emissions Recycle 92% of the cities waste Have 49% of DMC’s certified in sustainability Obtain just 9% of the cities electricity from renewable sources This mix placed Barcelona Tourism in 34th place in the 2023 rankings, with the GDS allowing you to compare regions directly, read about their initiatives and view verified data. Destination Impact Any event has a unique opportunity to leave a positive impact on its host destination, whether it’s an exclusive incentive or world-class sporting event. Everything within the event’s design and programme can be built with a positive destination impact in mind. CSR Projects When considering breakout sessions within a conference or activity days within an incentive, look into activities that give back to the local community and CSR projects that work towards achieving the UN’s sustainable goals. If you’re working with a local DMC, they will no doubt have plenty of suggestions and the knowledge of what support the area needs. Great examples we’ve seen include: Wildlife conservation efforts House building in rural areas Urban rewilding projects Dog rescue walks Gifting This same positive destination impact can be weaved into the gifting aspect of events. Many businesses are revisiting the habit of giving away unwanted swag, and are now looking at either reducing it altogether or replacing it with something more meaningful and sustainable. If you’re looking to stay with a physical gift, engage with local businesses or artists who can provide unique, often personalised gifts, that work to support the local economy. Those made using ethical practices and environmentally friendly materials are even better. Alternatively, more and more businesses are moving towards gifting in the form of donations that support local charities or community initiatives such as funding a safe cycling programme or donations to a community library. Providing your attendees with an explanation of this is often better received than a branded water bottle or bamboo desk organiser.

When we talk about event design, we’re talking about the programming within an event, rather than all of the operational elements that create the space for a programme to happen. As events are typically built for people, the design looks at how we can be socially sustainable to our audiences, and essentially design out the waste products. Sustainable Agendas Whether it’s across a multi-day event or a single day conference, having attendees rushing from session to session, or with just 30-minutes after a session to unwind and change before a dinner is exhausting, and likely isn’t helping achieve event objectives. Scientifically speaking, it’s the prefrontal cortex region of the brain that is crucial for concentration and memory retention, and it’s this region that is affected when burnout strikes. Even on a smaller scale, when the brain is required to concentrate for extended periods of time, it can deplete the effectiveness of this region. At conferences, reducing the length of each session by even 10-minutes allows delegates time for what is referred to as a “micro-break”. This gives the brain a chance to store and absorb information, increase motivation, and switch focus before a new topic or task. Consider facilitating these microbreaks instead of giving delegates a chance to check their work emails (not a break) with short walks, breathing techniques, chair yoga, or healthy foods…

Food is essential to the existence of the human species, and production of food itself is responsible for one quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. When you consider this in parallel with the statistic from the UN that around 17% of global food production is wasted between farming, retail and household waste, that means a huge portion of dangerous emissions has been, well, for nothing. This makes it no surprise that food is a consistently hot topic of contention in sustainable goals and sustainable events, and why it has its entirely own section in our guide. Event producers have the chance to implement positive changes to catering, and in the past 5 years we’ve seen some brilliant replacements for tired and wasteful methods. Local & In-Season Produce A large part of carbon emissions from food come from ‘food miles’, being the distance Mangoes from Florida or California have travelled to get onto a conference buffet in London. This can be easily mitigated by vowing to use only local and in-season ingredients. As we mentioned in our Policies section, look to implement a goal of only offering food from within a 30-mile radius. This may sound restrictive, but from London this could take you to the wineries of Guildford, to fresh catches of Carp from the River Medway, or to endless organic farmers raising cattle and growing vegetables right here in the UK. Carbon Footprint Transparency When calorie counts were first implemented on menus in restaurants, many predicted that this would result in fewer orders of high-calorie content foods. Whilst some studies showed this to be true, a review examining 31 studies found that the desired effect was not seen on a population-wide level. This comes to mind when looking at the recent trend of venues and restaurants showcasing the carbon footprint of a meal on their menu. However, this strategy is too new to deduce concrete data for success from. What we do know is that as an industry, we’re trying to educate and encourage attendees to make responsible decisions, and awareness of what they are eating is certainly a way to at least educate, if not change behaviours. As an event producer, working with your caterer or venue to obtain carbon footprint data is in itself a way we’ll change behaviours. What may be a new ask at the time could then become a standard provision from a supplier to future clients as a way to win sustainable business. Vegan and Vegetarian Menus Printing carbon emissions on food items will show one thing very clearly, that is the considerable impact of vegan menus when compared to meat-based menus. Both the World Health Organisation and UN have highlighted the demand that meat and dairy places on our world's natural resources, and estimated that a global shift to a plant-based diet could reduce greenhouse gases from food production by up to 70% by 2050. Increasingly, members of the population are shifting to more of a plant-based diet not due to animal empathy, but in a bid to combat climate change. Even changing just one meal or one day to a plant-based menu during an event can have profoundly positive effects on carbon emissions, and is something seen more frequently, and accepted more openly by attendees. Communication is key in this area, so set yourself up for success by being transparent with event attendees from the get-go. Include in the joining instructions or on the event registration website the intentions your event has to reduce its carbon footprint, and to expect vegan or vegetarian offerings during the programme. We understand this can be a stretch for some end-clients, so consider negotiating to simply remove red-meats or lamb, both of which produce around 4x the carbon emissions than chicken does, due to the vast amounts of land and water both cows and sheep require for raising. Food Redistribution Even the best laid plans and careful number planning alongside your venue can result in a surplus of food, whether that’s from no-show attendees or reduced consumption. Arranging a food redistribution strategy in advance of your event is essential to truly combat waste and in turn, can help to support the local community. Many companies can help in this strategy by preserving leftover conference food in a safe way, such as Olio, The Felix Project, FareShare and City Harvest. City Harvest is a London-based food waste charity that rescues good food that would otherwise be destined for waste and works to redistribute it to over 350 charities across London. Do your research and line-up an organisation to be on standby in advance of your event for the most successful implementation of this sustainable strategy.

Modern technology offers a huge amount for sustainable events, something we previously spoke about, from increased data analytics, improved attendee experience, to reduced carbon emissions and physical waste, however the events industry is, overall, yet to use it to its full advantage. Registration Technology Think of the registration process spanning from that initial invitation all the way to arriving onsite, entering the event, and even beyond into post-event communications. All of these points are opportunities to gain valuable insights, and there are ways technology can streamline this to improve sustainability. Digital registration offers the chance to maximise on your sustainable communication and get the attendee’s buy-in from the offset, avoiding negative feedback for those caught off-guard by new expectations. Ask that attendees bring reusable water bottles to fill at coolers, as plastic bottles won’t be available Publish menus, if you’re able to, and if applicable, highlight moments where vegan meals will be the only option Look to partner with and build in lift-sharing platforms to your registration site, such as Mobility Ways or Kinto, as an alternative if public or group transport is not an option. A digital registration package allows for paperless check-in using iPads, or even as simple as phones to scan a QR code onsite. If security at your event permits, share in advance that lanyards and badges will not be provided, or alternatively, source recycled or seed paper along with reusable, environmentally friendly lanyards. Event Apps The invention that has ultimately removed the need for any paper at an event, if done properly. Set the requirement for downloading the app upon registration, include instructions in all further communications, and ensure staff are onsite to assist with anyone who hasn’t yet been able to download the app. A good event app allows attendees to view site plans, connect with peers, receive notifications for breaks, vote and engage with sessions. However, all of this is heavy on the battery life of a modern day smartphone. Plan ahead and look to provide charging stations throughout your event to avoid any negative attendee experience (for top sustainable marks, look for people powered and kinetic options such as bike riding, offering a wellness component to delegates as well - a great example by WeWatt can be found here).

Energy Much of your events energy usage will depend on the venue you choose to partner with for the project, and how sustainable their facilities are. If you want to delve deeper in your sustainable event journey, raise the topic of energy usage and monitoring early on with your partnering venue. As we covered in our collaboration section, this immediately opens the floor to your sustainable goals and sets the expectation of reduction early on. Some venues are able to either track or at least estimate the amount of energy that has been used in your contracted and occupied event spaces, giving solid data to use when tracking emissions and looking to reduce in future, or offset (more on this at the end of the guide). Within this, consider building Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) into your contract such as keeping the air con or heat at a specific temperature to reduce energy consumption, lower than what many conference venues tend to blast out. Beyond the venue, consider the following alternatives throughout the event production to design out wasteful energy usage: High quality, low energy lighting Avoid the use of diesel generators If generators are necessary for event production, look for those either battery powered or compatible with biofuels Look to use LED screens rather than projectors, as projectors typically require more power Developments and initiatives seen in venues or other industries act as great inspiration to implement back in your organisations office spaces, whether that’s LED smart lighting, or switching to a renewable energy provider over one's reliant on fossil fuels. Waste Management The Event Industry Council (EIC) estimates that the average conference attendee generates 1.89kg of waste per day, much of which could have been recycled, composted, or donated… The first step in managing your waste is to understand the streams in which it’s coming from, and reduce directly from the source. This is a far more efficient tool than simply figuring out how to manage the waste you’re left with after the fact. Banff & Lake Louise Tourism, during one of their flagship destination events, closed off all public bins within the event site and directed visitor waste to a central waste-sorting station, managed by a third party vendor. The waste was then sorted and measured, with the discovery made that plastics, unsurprisingly, made up 35% of the stream, with 23% of all event waste being sent to landfill. Using this data, the following year a messaging campaign was launched to all event suppliers of the food and cocktail festival, mandating that only compostable serveware be brought onto the site, rather than plastics or non-recyclable materials. Appropriate suppliers were suggested to help ease the transition in supply chain management for vendors. The results saw an impressive buy-in from suppliers as plastics accounted for just 2% of the onsite waste stream, and just 9% of all event waste being sent to landfill, with the remaining 89% being either compostable (21%), recyclable (6%), or liquid waste (62%). What this looks like exactly will vary with each event, but we’ve identified some of the usual culprits below, as well as some solutions to reduce and remove unnecessary waste. Packaging and shipping remnants Consolidate shipments from suppliers as much as you can. Work to see what packaging components can be removed altogether, perhaps you’re bulk ordering notepads and can forgo individual plastic wrapping, or if you’re expecting multiple deliveries, consider if you can wait and have them arrive together. Often package fillers like polystyrene and styrofoam aren’t recyclable at all. Work with suppliers to suggest and source alternatives like simple honeycomb card, or shredded seed paper that you can plant and watch blossom (make this a demonstration at the appropriate event to really bring delegates into your sustainable journey). Single-use items (coffee cups, cutlery etc.) ‘Compostable’ waste needs to be taken to the appropriate commercial composting facility in order to fulfil its promise. We want to highlight here that even if an item is marked as compostable, it needs to be disposed of appropriately. Compostable coffee cups that end up in landfill are unlikely to compost as they are packed down without oxygen. Remove single-use items altogether by providing only reusable and washable dishwares and cutlery. Intertwine this into your communications by asking delegates to bring their own coffee cups or water bottles if they want drinks on the go. Even if you’re organising an outdoor event or festival, investing in rented portable dishwashing facilities has a much lower footprint than even compostable items, when the entire process of transporting and commercial composting is considered. Signage & event marketing materials This could be trade-show booth materials, directional signage, or print-out leaflets, though we hope those are few and far between in today’s digital age. Work with your branding team on designs that you can agree to have in place for multiple events, rather than what becomes ‘single-use’ signage. Forgo including the date or year for longevity, or rather than replace the whole sign, get vinyl strips to cover and correct outdated information. The best solution though, is to use digital signage where possible. This may be included in your venue, or look to hire mobile screens of various sizes to place round your event space, allowing you to update signage on the day if need be. Swag & giveaways Physical giveaways have come under fire in the sustainability movement, as typical choices tend to go straight in the garbage when event attendees get home, or even whilst they’re still at the venue. If swag is going to be done, it needs to be done to a high standard, using sustainably sourced materials to make a truly useful product. To really minimise the footprint from your event, consider a digital giveaway such as a gift card, or an experience with a local activity provider, giving back to the local community. Food waste We touch on this thoroughly in the ‘Catering’ section of this guide. Miscellaneous or Larger items This could be leftover furniture, lighting or decorations purchased for large productions. Our first piece of advice here is to rent from the many suppliers who make rentals their business to avoid the need to purchase. If renting isn’t possible or you’re left with more than anticipated, there are suppliers to help you with that too. Specifically within the UK events industry, we’ve got EventCycle, who work to repurpose leftover event materials and find them a new home. We recommend building a relationship with a waste management provider before your event starts and talking through potential waste, rather than calling them on tear-down day, so that they can plan their strategy and removal accordingly. The last step in waste management is to separate and measure the waste. Again, there are many great companies out there who can do this professionally for you, and will weigh your food, cardboard, metal, and plastics separately for an accurate post-event report. This figure may be your first measurement, and thus acts as a benchmark to reduce at your next project. Budget Doing the right thing doesn’t always come cheap, and this is certainly the reality for sustainability. For example, sustainable products that use natural, raw, high-quality materials are going to be more expensive than cheap plastic alternatives, and working with ethical suppliers that pay a fair living wage to their workers does mean a higher cost to the buyer. It’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of the future, so when you’re producing sustainable events, ensure you account for this increase in costs and set expectations in budget planning with clients or executives. Think creatively here and see what other departments you may be able to share costs with, for example tapping into a marketing budget for when you can share those good news, sustainable success stories.

Society has arrived to where it is today due to humans being social animals, with communication and collaboration at the core. We’ve turned basic elements into complex technologies over thousands of years, and it’s apparent that the future of the planet is not a sole-venture, it relies on collective knowledge pooling between industries, and clear communication throughout. Internationally accepted standards and ambitions like the UNs SDGs are now enabling collaboration across industries in a way that hasn’t before been seen, but is proving incredibly valuable. What’s incredibly encouraging is the knowledge that behind every big cultural change or social movement, were initial actions instigated by a small few. Attendee Communication // Involving Attendees to Drive Change A successful sustainable event needs to have buy-in from not just stakeholders and executives, but from every single person attending that event. This makes up some of what constitutes your Scope 3 emissions considerations, in addition to your supply chain, are attendee travel and accommodation beyond what the organiser is providing. You may not be able to control how your delegates travel to your event, but with strong communications you can invite your audience to collaborate with you on your sustainable goals, and hopefully inspire them to be part of a positive change. Develop a clear and consistent messaging strategy that speaks openly about sustainable goals from the outset, on your event website, registration page, and in event confirmation emails and reminders. These communications may ask attendees to bring their own coffee mugs or reusable water bottles for refill stations in the absence of disposables, or perhaps you can provide emissions calculations and verified links for attendees to purchase Verified Carbon Units (VCU’s), and offset their own travel. In our industry, we know incentives work well, so go a step further by incentivising eco-conscious actions for greater success, such as offering travel rebates for taking public transport. Stakeholder Engagement Any project can have a huge variety of stakeholders, including sponsors and partners, so how do you best engage all those diverse parties to agree on and participate in your sustainable event strategy? How do you sell them the “why”? The issue of sustainability, or the lack thereof in the world, is no longer a secret or opinion reserved to the ‘hippies’, it’s a systematic issue affecting every corner of the world. To be able to contribute towards solving systematic solutions should be your leading proposition to engage stakeholders. Other leading reasons might include: Risk Management Brand Reputation Competitive Edge Your reasons are solid, so how do you now engage that senior stakeholder group? We believe achieving their buy-in comes down to showing ambition and sharing the efficiencies that are to be found in a sustainable event. For example, can your food waste support the local community? A social win. Perhaps, in live productions, as seen in Coldplay’s infamous and groundbreaking tour (literally), you can harness the power of movement and turn crowd motion into kinetic energy, saving on possible generator costs, and no doubt making the headlines. The cherry on top is data. For ongoing stakeholder commitment and engagement, all parties need to be presented with findings and facts in a solid event debrief. Set your collection points, whether that’s through attendee travel surveys, waste management statics, community surveys, or carbon emissions reporting, that allow you to demonstrate with data the positive difference you’re making and goals you’re achieving project after project. Suppliers (including venues) We covered supply chain management earlier in this guide, but the importance of this relationship in achieving sustainable goals deserves digging in a little deeper. Once you’ve vetted and onboarded new suppliers, it’s crucial that sustainability doesn’t then become a check-box exercise that sits on the backburner, with priority often given to getting the project done by any means. Allocate time in each meeting to talk about sustainable goals, milestones, and any new potential solutions or technology that might have become available. Perhaps your venue previously offered private transfers from the nearest train station, but through a continued relationship and understanding that they recently installed electric charging stations, you may be able to explore the potential for them to invest in an electric vehicle instead. Action truly does breed more action when it comes to sustainability, and ensuring this topic is always on the table with suppliers will help to solidify demand and increase supply across the board. Wider Industry Collaboration We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, sustainable progression and real change in the industry, let alone the wider world, is not a sole-venture, it will come from successful collaboration between agencies and industries. Conferences can learn from festivals, and incentive events can learn from eco-travel trends. The UK events industry is a community blooming with opportunity, events such as All Agencies Quiz, MICEBOOK, Confex and The Meetings Show all provide a unique platform where competitors can sit and learn from one another, and ultimately work together towards what is a shared common goal. Either get yourself or send your team to these industry workshops and seminars to be part of the conversation that is driving change.

The notion of sustainability is wrapped up into a co-dependent, 3-part package, being Social, Environmental and Economic factors. Environmental tends to take the spotlight, and rightly so as our society and economics cannot exist without this environment. However, social considerations should always feature in a sustainable events plan. Diversity, Equality & Inclusion aims to ensure every space is welcoming to people of all genders, races, degrees of mobility, neurodiversity, and ages. Organisations and businesses are making great headway in building this into their recruitment and day-to-day operations. However, are you mirroring this effort in your events? Part of the planning process should focus specifically on making your event an inclusive environment for all. Consider asking these questions to start the conversation about DEI at your events: Do you know the audience you expect, and is your event design inviting to all? The registration stage is a great place to open a platform of communication between event organisers and their audience, allowing bespoke tailoring of the event design, dependent on feedback. However, it’s important to remember that many people may not feel comfortable sharing their invisible needs. Asking questions about disability or neurodivergent needs is a great start in appropriately tailoring the event, but consider putting certain measures in place regardless. The number of parents in the workforce increased substantially in the decade leading to 2021, the most recent survey showed. If your event is a company requirement that goes over multiple days, consider offering a childminding rebate, or go as far to include a creche space in your venue. If it’s a single day, take into consideration school hours and if it’s feasible, design your event within this space, making it more accessible to this growing audience. Consider the various genders and ethnicities your event is open to, and assess whether you are providing a safe environment from the outset that allows participants to show up and be themselves. Taking into account any religious holidays when setting event dates, and having a diverse representation in your content or sessions, are both great steps to ensure you’re providing an equitable experience for all. Is the venue accessible? As a basic starting point, ensure that the chosen venue and your event spaces are accessible if using a wheelchair, whether that’s via elevators or ramps. Consider if travel to the venue is accessible, can public transport take you right to the door, is the driveway smooth or cobbled? It’s inclusive to share any quirks of the venue with your audience so they know what to expect and can best prepare. Is the content accessible? Is your AV set-up to provide hearing loops, or will you need to hire this technology specifically? Can you obtain BSL or ASL sign-language interpreters or include text captioning to all content and videos? Can you provide quiet spaces within your venue? Not only for mothers who may need a private pumping space, but for attendees who may need a space for religious prayer, or to decompress momentarily in an overly stimulating or sociable environment. An organisation leading the way in the UK with this is EventWell, who provide sensory escapes within a variety of events, giving delegates the space to meditate surrounded by calming scents, or perhaps even rehearse speaking notes in private. Have people got a choice in their agenda or activities? Whilst certain events may not be able to offer such flexibility, if you’re able to design your event in a way that gives every single person a choice, even a small one, it goes a long way in making neurodivergent individuals feel in control. Sharing what to expect in certain sessions, whether it’s going to call for simply listening, public speaking, group work, or movement, and offering a choice in which to attend. Hybrid events are fantastic in their inclusivity, as it offers people the chance to engage from either their home or hotel room whilst onsite.

In collaboration with isla. In order to reduce your event's impact on the planet and its resources, you need to know where it currently stands, what the industry calls ‘benchmarking’. Calculating your footprint of CO2e emissions has truly never been easier with online tools, multiple companies offering a professional full-service, and many operating specifically within the events industry. You can check out our previous blog post on this here, and read a review of the leading market tools by the Institute for Sustainable Events here. With this in mind, we’ll keep this section short and to the point. In order to accurately calculate and measure your true impact, you need to consider the full scope of emissions that you’re accountable for. The industry divides these into 3 separate areas: Scope 1 - Direct Emissions These are things that the event organiser or organising body is directly responsible for as part of the event production. Travel in company owned vehicles would sit in here, as would emissions from your office building used to plan the event, and if required for outdoor or larger events, use of a generator and fuel consumed would also sit in Scope 1. Scope 2 - Indirect Energy Emissions This scope is all about energy consumption as an indirect result of your live event. For example, the electricity used to light the venue would sit here. This scope is described as ‘indirect’ as we refer to these emissions happening at the source of energy production, rather than for use at your event. Here is where choosing a venue who purchases energy from renewable sources will have a significant impact on your emissions reporting. If you really want to ensure that you are making data-driven decisions throughout the event planning process, measurement tools such as TRACE by isla, allow you to “test” different scenarios of emissions outputs by plugging in different scenarios. For example, what your emissions might look like with a 50% vegan menu vs a 100% vegan menu. Scope 3 - All Other Indirect Emissions Saving the biggest till last, Scope 3 considers activities that are essentially outside of the organisers direct control, but within their influence. As an organiser, you should be conscious to maintain a level of responsibility for the impact of this scope, although not directly responsible. Attendee travel is a big part of Scope 3, as are the emissions produced by anyone in your supply chain, contracted for any portion of your event. Catering companies, entertainment acts, accommodation providers, transportation companies, and physical marketing materials are just some of what may appear in your Scope 3, and this will look different for every event. Whilst this may sound like a daunting task, professional carbon calculation software is built to make educational estimates in areas you may not have access to detailed information. The key in this process is to prioritise the areas of your event that are likely to have the largest impact on your emissions data. When it comes to attendee data, for example, if you don’t have access to their travel methods beforehand, it will be crucial to survey post-event to determine whether they used cars, trains, or cycled. We advise our clients to collect data from at least 75% of a group size in order to make an accurate carbon emission estimation. Although deemed as ‘indirect’, you can take back control and make a remarkable difference on your ‘carbon bottom line’ as it were, by choosing who you work with very carefully. We discussed supply chain management and a sustainability vetting process earlier in this guide, and by implementing this, you can be confident in knowing that all your partners are operating an environmentally responsible business, and hopefully supporting you in both your data collection and carbon reductions. Reporting Once you’ve calculated and collected all that data, we encourage you to put together a report on your findings from each event. A post-event sustainability report might include: Initial objectives set for event sustainability A round-up of successes seen Details of challenges faced Areas where you have high confidence in the data obtained Areas where the data may have gaps, and any educated assumptions that have been made on the data-pool Improvements that could be made in the future Carbon Offsetting The penultimate section to this guide for a very purposeful reason, being that offsetting should be your last resort after putting in place all reductions and sustainable alternatives possible. Of course it’s impossible to eliminate your footprint altogether. However, too often, businesses or events advertise being ‘net-zero’ or ‘carbon-neutral’, through solely offsetting programmes that in fact take multiple years to negate the carbon produced. The roots of offsetting (pardon the pun) began with tree planting tactics, and whilst this grew in popularity, its long-term viability has been debated. If you want to learn more, we recommend reading this fantastic article from NASA. However, for a quick statistical recap, consider this. The COP27 event stated that it produced 62,695 tonnes of CO2e . Whilst the efficiency of trees and forests in sequestering carbon varies incredibly depending on the region they’re grown in and the age of the tree, the generally accepted estimate is that a typical tree can sequester and store 1 ton of CO2e each year. This means it would take 62,695 trees an entire year to sequester the amount of carbon produced by COP27. The offsetting industry has since matured and now offers alternative investments that are both more effective in sequestering carbon and are more robust, long-term solutions to environmental and social problems. When deciding on an offsetting project to invest in, it’s important to go through a reputable program who frequently validates the effectiveness of their hosted projects, such as the “Verra - Verified Carbon Standard’ (VCS) or the Gold Standard (GS). Typical offsetting investments may be in areas such as: ‘Blue’ Carbon A term that refers to coastal and ocean ecosystems that naturally sequester and store large amounts of carbon. Blue Carbon projects look to protect these habitats and continue researching what is still a fairly new area of science when it comes to natural carbon storage. Carbon Capture & Storage Innovative technologies and processes that draw out carbon from the atmosphere and store it in underground ‘geological reserves’ (essentially rock layers deep below the earth's surface) or use it in manufacturing ‘recycled’ cement. Boosting Carbon Sequestration Through improved agricultural processes, conservation and restoration efforts across wetlands, grasslands, and forested areas. If you want a great example of regenerative farming, check out the Reforest Project here. Renewable Energy Sources Boosting Carbon Sequestration Accelerating the move away from fossil fuels to renewable sources through e-fuels, wind farms, solar, and research into new technologies. The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm was the first offshore wind farm in South UK, completed in 2018 with 116 turbines, and was a groundbreaking achievement of the time.

As any event requires a full debrief with all stakeholders, and typically individual debriefs with suppliers and partners, sustainability should feature as a key discussion point. We touched on reporting earlier in this guide, and whilst ideally you’d incorporate feedback from the debrief into your report, coming to a debrief session with any measurement data reporting you have will be incredibly valuable in driving robust, data-led conversations. Weave sustainability objectives and evaluations into your debrief documents either as its own section, or as a subsection under every single element of the event to really dissect what was achieved, and what could be done better. When concluding your debrief and looking to the future, ensure you bring back in that data analysis piece that can help to set actionable strategies to progress your sustainability initiatives with each event moving forward. Reviewing sustainable progress in this way enables everyone to stay on track with not only wider organisational goals, but ultimately global goals for a net-zero future and beyond.

We wanted to round-off this guide with what we believe the next steps are when it comes to sustainable design, and that’s in tipping the scale that bit further over to being regenerative in your design. As a society, we cannot merely reduce our impact anymore, as the level we are currently at, is no longer sustainable. It has become evident that efforts now need to work towards restoring the damage that has already been done, before we are at a place where simply sustaining that level is acceptable. As we put it in our initial vocabulary glossary: Regeneration and regenerative business focuses on giving more than you take from the entire ecosystem and pillars of sustainability. Whilst our industry continues to develop in this area, and we get working on “The Essential Guide to Regenerative Events”, we remind all of our readers of the simple yet powerful commitments made by the Net Zero Carbon Events Pledge and counties around the world, that you too can implement in your projects. Those being: Net Zero by 2050 Halving carbon emissions by 2030 Final Words​ So there you have it. Our essential guide to creating sustainable events. We hope you were able to learn something new or were inspired to think differently about your next event. As an organisation, we're constantly looking for ways to innovate and create events that do better for the planet and as always, collaboration is key to a sustainable future. ​ You can check out similar content in our Blog and if you haven't already, feel free to sign up to our quarterly emails here. We wish you all the best in tackling the mammoth task of sustainability within events! ​ If you have any feedback, please do share this with us here.