I’ve spent the past few years repeating my mantra so often that I sometimes sound like a broken record. “It’s not about being greener,” I’ll say, “It’s about sustainability.” One of the fundamentals of our business is that it’s not enough to look at your environmental impact – you have to be looking at your social and economic effect too. The harmony between those three interconnected themes should in theory mean that creative events prosper in a way that reduces any negative impact we may have.
I’m starting to think I may have to change my tune. Over the past year I’ve heard a new theory start to gain traction across a number of business sectors that I think should worry anyone who is genuinely interested in a more sustainable future.
The problem arises when organisations or individuals look at the financial impact of their event and interpret that as the benchmark from which their “financial sustainability” should be measured. To give you an example, I might want to use recycled paper at my event rather than the regular paper we’ve used in the past. That would sound like a no-brainer – it’s a more sustainable option. But of course I could decide that as the (tiny) extra cost was going to have an impact on my profit, the most sustainable thing to do from a financial point of view would be to stick with the status quo.
This was illustrated perfectly by a debate on Radio 4 recently between conservationists and housing developers who wanted to build on green belt land. This would damage the countryside said the conservationists. Maybe, replied the developers, but it’s still sustainable – because we won’t be able to offer low cost housing to people if we don’t build there, and we think it’s too expensive to redevelop brown field sites. They were using an argument around affordability of their end product to justify a relaxation of environmental regulation. To me that is a misinterpretation of the financial element of a sustainable approach.
I have always believed that sustainability should not cost more across the piece of an event. That does not mean that individual elements may be more expensive, with complementary savings made elsewhere. To pretend that because sustainability involves a financial element that nothing will ever cost more is a nonsense and a wilful distortion of the case for sustainability.
Financial sustainability should mean that the decisions you take around environmental and social policy are economically sound and durable, but that does not mean you can dismiss any change in behaviour simply because it costs more.
At the start of every year it’s traditional to gaze into the crystal ball and speculate about what might be in store for the next twelve months. Given our particular focus on sustainability the beginning of 2011 has got me thinking about the progress we’ve made as an industry so far and where we might be in a year’s time.
Read More »
We have had a great week working on the Start Garden Party at Clarence House in London. It’s been an inspirational event and also a great example of how all sectors of the event industry are embracing a more sustainable approach. From household names like M&S, Eurostar and B&Q down to grass roots suppliers there is a real feeling walking round the site that green issues are now part of the mainstream.
Read More »
While there are a number of sustainable event guides out there (and it would be rude of me not to mention ours here), there has never to my knowledge been an entire book devoted to the subject until now. Earthscan have just published “Sustainable Event Management” by Meegan Jones, and Meegan has done an amazing job of condensing and distilling the wealth of information out there into one reference. The book is by no means lightweight, but then neither is the subject matter. There are detailed sections covering branding and communications, energy, transport, water and procurement. Read More »
We have an ongoing intern programme at Seventeen Towers, which we have found really valuable. The extra resource helps us with special projects around the office and also hopefully offers our interns a bit of hands on experience in an events agency. As part of our ethical approach to business we pay our interns – not a fortune, but more than a lot of other places, which makes us feel better about ordering them around allows us to treat them as real team members, albeit on a short term scale. Read More »
Let me first of all wish you a very peaceful Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
As I write this, Barack Obama is on his feet making what could be the most influential speech of the two week Copenhagen Summit. It will probably take months, if not years before we can give an accurate assessment of whether it’s been worthwhile or a collosal waste of time. What we can say is that once again a face to face meeting has proved to be the most effective way of getting world leaders together. This is a tremendous endorsement of our industry.
Read More »
Not sure how many of you saw this opinion piece in The Times on Friday – apologies if it’s already been discussed:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6934083.ece
Read More »
I was having an amusing spot of banter on Twitter with Mike Bell (@mikebell3d) this morning who was taking me to task for using a Green Tomato car (www.greentomatocars.com) to get to a meeting rather than public transport. It struck me that perhaps not everyone knew what we were talking about, so I figure a brief introduction is on order. Read More »
Since Twitter still seems to be the subject du jour in the events industry (with the upcoming Social Media Active event a good case in point – an excellent first step for anyone totally bamboozled by the whole thing, http://www.eventia.org.uk/html/article/Social-Media-Active) I wondered what everyone thought about the new Twitter lists function?
Read More »
A lot of what we talk about when we discuss sustainability comes down to the same classic ideas – reduce, reuse and recycle. If we could apply these ideas to more of what we do, we’re likely to be acting more sustainably.
Read More »
