Roundtable
the time to do it all. We are
going to be engaging with
the exhibitors and trying
to bring them on board but
we know that someone will
turn up with vinyl in the first
year. We will try and stop it
but they will argue that they
already have it and that is
fine for year one but by year
two and three we will argue
that they will need to get rid
of it responsibly and it is part
of an education process.”
What is the solution?
Victoria James, event
director at Hyve Group
believes the industry could
benefit from bringing in
experts from outside. She
added: “There are external
organisations and bodies
that could moderate what we
are doing as an industry and
they could tell us what we
should be focusing on.”
Seaman added: “Sharing
best practice. We worked
with the team at IMEX
because they had an
exhibitor accreditation
programme and we had a
chat with them because we
had a shared objective. It is
like when Volvo discovered
the seat belt, they didn’t
use it to their advantage
because they thought it was
important to share the idea.”
Kemp added: “The Event
Industry Council has just
created the Sustainable
Event Standard which has
a set of criteria events can
score themselves against.
It is something Informa is
involved in.”
What can we take away from this
roundtable?
Pitt believes we need to
consider the bigger problems.
He added: “We have just
started on this journey but
let us not forget that our
shows through travel and
energy consumption are
massive polluters.”
Lee believes sharing showspecific
knowledge is vital.
He added: “Transparency is
key, pre-show and post-show
and what we are seeing over
the past couple of years is
post-show analysis around
how sustainable events are.
Certain clients will come to
us and ask for that report
and others don’t, and we
“There are external organisations and bodies that
could moderate what we are doing as an industry and
they could tell us what we should be focusing on.”
send it to them automatically
so they can see the carbon
footprint of their show, so we
try to be as transparent as
possible.”
Kelly explained Reed
Exhibitions is looking at
their tendering process and
gathering an understanding
of how events are
performing. Sigler believes
pricing is the only way we
can make a difference for
smaller organisers.
Neill believes it is all
about presenting choice.
She added: “There are so
many other options out
there on how we can make
events more sustainable
and we need to share the
things we can be doing
from looking at the menus
for catering and sourcing
local ingredients and also
showing the foodbanks that
we can use in those areas.
We could even look at the
speaker programmes and use
speakers that don’t need to
fly or travel long distances to
the shows.”
Barnes explained that
we should source more
materials locally but
recognises that Covid-19 is a
huge challenge to focus on.
Wilson believes we should
recycle our materials and use
them at other events.
James believes we need to
identify where the problems
are. She said: “We need to
work out what are those
biggest polluters are for the
events industry and make a
list of them and we attack
the biggest contributors.”
EN
GES is the first global fullservice
events provider to
earn both APEX/ASTM Level
Two Certification in the US
and ISO 20121 in the UK,
both voluntary international
standards for sustainable event
management.
August — 27