EVENT GREENING – HOW TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE CORPORATE EVENT

‘Event greening’: if you’ve been asked to plan, manage or host an event and your organisation tips even the faintest nod to a corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy, event greening is your watchword. It’s all about sustainability and your corporate eventing kudos might just hang on the decisions you make to integrate social and environmental respect into your event.

Think about it – corporate events are big business, both in terms of the revenues and rewards, but also in respect of the resources they demand and strain from the hosting environment, the local community and its people. Building in sustainability can reduce the negative impact of an event, benefit the local region with jobs, raise awareness about social improvement and, here’s one for the finance department, it can reduce costs and earn valuable respect for your brand’s commitment to environmental friendliness, so think on.

Here’s a list of greening practices that you can build in to your eventing programme:

1. Water conservation

Tap water tastes great and is available on demand and there’s no need to transport it in – get your venue and caterers in on the action too.

2. Energy efficiency

Encourage guests to car-share, use suppliers based near the venue and make sure your invitation includes walking directions.

3. Green purchasing

Go Fairtrade, use recycled materials for your promo stuff, use LED lighting and a green energy supplier or generate your own power.

4. Social development

Use local ethical suppliers, give students or the unemployed work experience and start a social project that’ll have a positive effect on the community.

5. Waste management

Don’t date your promo materials so you can use them again, don’t print if you don’t need to and employ a waste collection company if you can’t recycle. Reduce, re-use, recycle…

Event management agencies are used to event greening and can provide you with a checklist of social-savvy tips and tactics to help you to meet the demands of your CSR policy and the environment that your event should aim to support.