Pull through page title

1) Choose an eco friendly venue

One of the main factors to consider when hosting an in-person event is the environmental sustainability of your venue. You want a venue that prioritises sustainability and can back their commitment up with policy and benchmarked targets. Ensure that the venue you choose has green awards and accreditations, such as the IACC Green Star Certificate, the Greengage ECOsmart Gold Venue Award, and MIA Green Meetings, for example.

Accreditations like these show that your event venue will operate with reduced carbon emissions, waste reduction, socially responsible sourcing, community engagement, and work with suppliers with a shared sustainability vision.

Choosing a venue that can identify the percentage of its energy that comes from renewables will also add weight to your event’s eco-friendly credibility.

2) Focus on venue accessibility

A large part of your event’s environmental sustainability is about accessibility. With travel being the biggest contributor to a typical event’s carbon footprint (around 60%) note if a potential venue can offer:

• Excellent transport links
• Eco-friendly public transport and shuttle buses
• Electric vehicle charging points
• Car sharing incentives (free parking, closer parking etc.)
• Accessibility by foot or bike from a transport hub
• Bike hire

Good pre-event communications are essential to optimising sustainable accessibility. Using social media and direct marketing to inform attendees about best routes, transport options, parking arrangements, and a map of the event site will help them make more informed eco-friendly transport choices.

Whichever way attendees travel to your event – especially if they travel from abroad – there will inevitably be a carbon emissions impact. It is therefore crucial to find ways to minimise and offset that impact by making your event as green as possible.

3) Consider event travel surveys

To help gauge where attendees are travelling from, and how they will travel, consider using a pre-event survey. You might include this short travel intent questionnaire with the welcome information sent to attendees on event sign-up.

You could also include a post-event survey in your event round up email. Knowing how attendees travelled to your previous events, and how effective your communications were about transport options, will inform future decisions about accessibility to help further minimise carbon footprint.

4) Minimise waste

A simple and effective way to increase and promote your event’s sustainability is to work with the venue in minimising waste. This can include a ban on single use plastics and choosing vendors who only use recyclable or reusable materials, such as drinking cups, plates and cutlery, and eco-friendly products.

For attendees, ensure that there are clearly marked recycling bins placed around the venue for single use plastics, cans, glass bottles, paper etc. Make sure the venue has a good recycling strategy for managing and processing single use plastics and other waste. Ask them about their recycling policy, their recycling partners and their methods.

Food waste should also be minimised, which is where the planning phase becomes crucial. Pre-booking meals and ensuring dietary requirements are known beforehand, particularly for delegates staying overnight, offers two ways to avoid wasting food.

5) Champion sustainable catering

As more people are choosing to mitigate their environmental impact through their diet, it’s important that your event reflects that commitment with its catering options. One way this can be achieved is through a plant-based service. Promoting a menu with meat-free options with vegetarian and vegan meal options will help enhance attendee experience, as well as adding to your eco-friendly event strategy.

It’s also important that you ensure your catering partners, big and small, are environmentally conscious in the food that they provide, how it’s sourced, prepared and served. Working with a venue that understands the environmental impact of their suppliers is key, here. Ensure that the food served is, where possible, organically and sustainably produced and can be certified as such. Promoting this is valuable for your event’s eco-friendly credibility.

Inspired?

Warwick Conferences offers full event and meetings support. From planning your event to ensure it meets your objectives, to offer an award-winning catering and overnight accommodation, its dedicated business development team is committed to working with you to create an event that inspires your delegates. For support on your next event, get in touch with the Warwick Conferences team today.

Enquire today