The sustainability of events is as important as ever! Sustainable event management is the act of making personal decisions that lessen an event's environmental impact. A festival planner’s duty is to take all reasonable steps to reduce the carbon footprint of an event. Planning is the first step in making your event sustainable; this affects every choice you make, including who you deal with and user for contractors, sponsors, and suppliers of the event.
Here are a few questions to ask to ensure a sustainable journey:
Can you recycle or upcycle?
Whenever feasible, choose materials for the event that have been repurposed or upcycled. Single-use products can harm the environment and generate a lot of waste. Rather, make every effort to locate items that can be repurposed. One strategy could be to use whiteboards or chalkboards instead of print signage, which are harder to reuse, or to ask guests to return their lanyards after an event plus do not have a date on them so they can be used for future events.
Do you have a proper waste management system?
Ensure the waste management strategy adheres to the "reduce, reuse, and recycle" approach.
What you can do is as follows:
- Arrange recycling containers with proper labelling or colour coding for paper, aluminium cans, dry and wet garbage, and other materials.
- Organise a service crew to pick up, empty, and arrange the rubbish, which accumulates rapidly.
- Restrict the quantity of flyers or brochures that each exhibitor wishes to hand out during the event. Furthermore, for those who intend to do so, you might include a clearly stated "waste management charge" in the contract.
Can invitations and advertising be digital?
Social media is as big as ever and is a great way to advertise for an event. It assists in putting an event right where the target market is, as well as expanding to an audience that wouldn’t have been reached traditionally.
Digital advertising doesn't require a significant marketing budget to be used unlike printing advertisements plus doesn't use paper. Roughly 90% of paper is made from trees, most of which are not harvested responsibly. We may lessen our support for this largely non-renewable business by using less paper.
Could you go solar?
A festival will need stages and lighting which will contribute to large energy usage. Save energy by using things like solar panels. Even in cloudy Britain, solar panels can readily power the majority of sound equipment and LED lighting. The future lies on renewable energy, and audiences are more aware than ever that we all need to embrace clean, zero-emission power sources.
There are so many factors that go into creating a sustainable event. Everything from biodegradable packaging/utensils for food to creating the best possible waste management. YPO have many frameworks to help with your planning, you can view them here on our dedicated festival solutions page.
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