Multiple ways exist to create a sustainable event. Here, we present three major ways to reduce your current and future environmental impact by putting on that training or lunch and learn.
The short list below is a good starting point for any company seeking to become more sustainable. The final product might be more defined, but this can get your team thinking about where they should put their energy.
1. Develop sustainable event policies
2. Supply chains
3. Sustainable venue identification
4. Sustainable travel
What are the benefits of developing and putting on a sustainable event?
- Developing well-planned sustainable plans can lead to long-term success in sustainable efforts.
- Brand health can increase when sustainable actions are taken by a company.
- From the long-term perspective, mitigation of climate change will benefit the local and global community and the business bottom line.
How can companies start planning their next sustainable event?
Develop sustainable event policies: Creating good policies for your company or organization can lead to long-term success in sustainability overall. Why? If your company works on developing specific parameters to follow and has identified these as important to its local community, it behooves those entities to follow through. One of the biggest failures in sustainability is not following through on plans to do so. This is also a major failure point for companies that commit to a communications plan. In some ways, it’s actually more detrimental to not follow through based on a premise of sustainability than to do nothing at all.
Supply chains: Procurement of supplies for your event is a major piece of the sustainability puzzle as is waste reduction. Work with vendors that understand the parameters of your needs and can offer those services. This includes zero-waste initiatives or waste reduction. Also, look for providers of food that can offer local food grown using organic methods; even better would be local farms that are growing using regenerative agriculture. Do some research and discuss this with your event sales managers.
Sustainable event identification: Identify venues in your local area that are powered by renewable resources or are working to offset their carbon emissions. Event planners should watch for things like LED lighting and water-saving technologies within their chosen venue.
Sustainable travel: Encourage your guests to travel using low-carbon emission modes. This can include battery electric vehicles, hybrids and carpooling. If this isn’t an option, try a hybrid event with some attendees watching via video streaming.