Working with event managers we don’t need to preach to the converted on the importance of sustainable events. It’s not our job to pontificate on the business impact of sustainability, or how it affects your reputation. It’s our job to help you improve the environmental impact of your event, and deliver a memorable experience that people will love, talk about and share.
Staging a sustainable event means you promote the use of resources in an efficient and responsible way. By doing this, your actions reduce the negative impact of your event on the environment and create a positive social and economic impact..
Sounds great, but how do you put this into practice?
It’s all in the planning and having an awareness of what you can control. Considering the impact of what you’re doing and putting it into an action plan will help you minimise the negative environmental impacts. Doing this gives you a baseline to work from and improve on. There are loads of things you can consider, but don’t worry you don’t need to tackle everything at one. To start chose what’s having the biggest impact and set realistic goals for how to reduce it.
Here are some main areas you can consider as part of this plan.
- Travel & transport
- Use energy efficiently
- Recycling & reducing waste
- Local community and ecological impact
- Water use and waste sanitation
Sustainability doesn’t mean boring
Brands and companies shouldn’t just think of sustainability and events as a box ticking exercise. Whether it’s a festival activation, a large conference in Europe or an internal conference – it’s a fantastic opportunity to show ingenuity.
Creativity and sustainability are closely linked which is great for us. We’re in the business of ideas, flawless execution and audience experience. Thinking about what you have available, and using left and right brained thinking, you can create some truly memorable ways to interact and directly engage consumers. Whether this is through combining gamification and art, reinforcing messaging through visual recycling installations or the use of digital screens and holograms, there are plenty of ways to inspire people.
By doing this you can not only be sustainable, but you can use it as part of your promotion. People are so aware of the environmental impact of everything, and it allows you to engage them in conversation.
By having a clear focus, you can deliver sustainable events that deliver fantastic experiences for your audience.
Work with people who care
Lastly you need to work with people who share your ethos. As an experiential events agency we need to understand your objectives, but also your environmental ones too. We have a sustainability policy, and it’s important to us personally. We take our own medicine and are proud members of Ecologi, and have a climate positive workforce.
This means we offset our employees entire carbon footprint, which includes getting to and from work, all business travel and even offsetting their carbon footprint from outside of work. Every month we have these trees planted on our behalf to support fund the world’s best climate crisis solutions.
See how many trees are in our A*live forest, and our company carbon reduction here.