Roundtable
Judith Wilson
Kimberley Barnes
an awful lot of work we are a
bit stuck to keep up with the
ambitions of our head office
around sustainability.”
Iain Pitt, MD at Clarion
Events energy portfolio,
believes that the industry
is slowly getting to grips
with part of the problem
but highlights international
travel as the biggest
culprit. He added: “What
we are talking about is
type one emissions, which
is our emissions and
our sustainability of our
shows, but no international
benchmark for sustainability
looks at type one emissions.
Our events are a massive
contributor to type three
emissions where people
travel to come to our
events. I think we as an
industry need to evolve the
conversation because we are
just beginning to get ahead
of type one but what about
type three emissions? We as
an industry need to look at
ticket prices to offset against
travel and we need to start
considering that.”
Mike Seaman, MD at
Raccoon Events believes
we are still in the dark in
our understanding of the
current situation and he
believes that the industry
needs a sustainability
strategy. He added: “I don’t
think we actually know the
state of it at the moment.
We as an industry are very
clever in some areas and
bringing people together
for one experience is more
sustainable than spreading
an event out over a longer
period of time. I do not
think we have a cohesive
sustainability strategy.
We’ve just launched a new
outdoor show and we want
to be carbon neutral in three
years and the reason we have
done it over three years as
opposed to one is because we
want to enter into a properly
talked through and measured
strategy that’s endemic to
our business.
“It’s great that carpet is
being recycled in Poland,
but do we actually need that
carpet? Should it even be
there? What’s the carbon
footprint of that product
being flown over to another
country to be recycled?
“We are going into five
areas of measuring: we
measure ourselves as a
company and the overall
contribution of the event,
we measure the insetting
of our suppliers, exhibitor
behaviour from when they
arrive to when they go home
and everything they order in
between and the same with
visitors. The final piece is
around offsetting.”
Anna Anson, owner of
the Ops Squad, a freelance
operations and health and
safety company, believes
that the industry needs to
consider local suppliers
and contractors. She added:
“We have a lot of overseas
contractors and wouldn’t
we be better off trying to
promote local contractors
for local events? There are
plenty of stand builders
around Birmingham and
London, but we are bringing
in people from all over the
world to come and build
stands.”
Jeff Lee, head of operations
at GES, explained GES looks
at the materials they use.
He added: “For laminate, it
is very difficult to recycle
but what we found was that
there were local charities
that that laminate can go to
and we work with a charity
that takes that laminate and
puts it into local housing.
We then looked at how we
recycle vinyl and we worked
with our supplier to ensure
the end product that gets
chipped into other plastics
that then gets moulded into
other products.
“One of the difficult
materials is the recycling
of carpet and the mix of
materials that goes into that
carpet and one area was the
high oil cord carpet that
we use quite a lot of and we
couldn’t find anywhere in the
UK that could recycle it even
though we are asking our
supplier to build a recycling
system in the UK.”
How are attitudes changing?
Kimberley Barnes (Evans),
event director for the Life
Science portfolio at Clarion,
said that attitudes are
changing and that there
is a demand for virtual
events because it reduces
travel and benefits the
environment. She added:
“I think that everyone is
on this and young
August — 25