Keeping Up The Sustainable Event Trend Post-Covid: How To Plan Your Upcoming Events
These events may look a bit different now, as people should remain cautious of spreading the virus. In this article, we will discuss the sustainable event trend. You’ll learn how to plan an event like this, and you’ll discover how these events will change post-covid.
Why Is Sustainability Important?
As educated professionals, we should all know by now that natural resources are finite. If we do not protect the earth and the resources that come from it, there will be long-term environmental and health consequences. Even by adopting the smallest sustainable practices, we can help the cause. This is why we have to consider sustainability or “green thinking” in every aspect of our lives. This includes business events.
Overview Of The Sustainable Event Trend
According to a report by Eventbrite, only 6% of survey respondents thought that green thinking played a role in events that they attended in 2019. However, just a year later, 59% of respondents believed that sustainability was factored into event planning. More and more, people are becoming aware of how events can affect the environment.
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for sustainability, particularly from millennials, who are now a large part of the workforce. This means that they have also been demanding more consideration for green business events. As a result, the sustainable event trend is born. And, we hope it will be here to stay.
What Does A Sustainable Event Look Like?
The sustainable event trend has brought us gatherings that look quite different from “traditional” gatherings. For example, organizers provide reusable cutlery and look for venues that are green too. These events produce less waste than normal events do.
How To Organize a Sustainable Event
Putting an event together is a stressful task. When adding sustainability on top of it, you may feel very overwhelmed. But not to worry, below are some tips for organizing this type of event, so that we can continue the sustainable event trend!
Venue Selection
One of the most important aspects of any event is the venue. To ensure that your gathering can be part of the sustainable event trend, you must, of course, choose a venue that is eco-friendly. These days, this is not a difficult task. Many venues implement environmentally friendly practices like recycling, water dispensers, reusable linen, and so forth.
When you’re booking the venue, be sure to enquire about their sustainability efforts! The most important things you need to find out are:
- How good is the buildings insulation and how much energy do they need for heating (The less the better)
- Is the location close to public transport?
Transportation
The most important thing to keep in mind here, particularly for international events, is that it’s best to choose a location where the majority of your attendees need to travel less.
However, there are other points of interest to note too. You should ensure that your venue is close to public transport, as we mentioned earlier. If not, you can organize buses (ideally electric ones) that collect your guests from the nearest train station or airport. This makes sustainable actions more accessible to your guests, as it prevents them from all taking separate cars.
As an organizer, you can also inform your guests about the options that they have to travel more sustainably. Mention any ride-share services, micro-mobility options, e-scooters, or bikes that are available for use.
Food
In other words, you should offer regional food with a low carbon footprint, rather than imported food.
In addition, you can choose foods that require minimal packaging. If you really need to use packaging, ensure that it is biodegradable or recyclable. Finally, if there is food left over at the end of the event, you can donate it to ensure that it does not go to waste!
Guests
Your guests need to plan their trips and make their way to your event. Many of your attendees will be coming from all around the country. You should suggest that your attendees make use of EnterAnGo to plan their trip. This way, they can monitor the CO2 emissions generated from their trip.
The platform allows business travellers to optimize their sustainability, no matter where your event takes place.
Partners
This tip is in connection with the one above. You could just suggest your guests use EnterAnGo, or you could partner with the platform. By doing this, you as the event organizer can embed a widget and offer an all-in-one booking solution to your attendees. This business trip booking solution will provide your attendees with the greenest travel options.
In addition, the platform will provide you with reports to understand the travel behaviour of your attendees and to show you the carbon footprint generated by their travels to your event.
Keeping Up The Sustainable Event Trend Post-Covid
Events in general, but particularly business events, have changed a lot due to the pandemic. Business trips and travel will likely never be the same. Below we briefly discuss how COVID-19 has impacted the sustainable event trend, and what factors you should keep in mind for post-covid events.
What Do Sustainable Events Look Like Now?
With COVID-19 came social distancing. This introduced an entirely new version of events – the online event. It is likely that this virtual aspect will be heavily incorporated into sustainable events going forward. Gatherings will now have attendees joining via webcam, rather than in person. While this may make networking a bit more difficult, it can reduce carbon emissions significantly!
Factors To Keep In Mind
We have to consider COVID-19, in our planning of events too. Even though the worst seems to be over, we still have to be cautious – particularly at gatherings like business events. Attendees of these events will be preoccupied with networking while keeping themselves covid-safe too.
This means, as the organizer of the event, you should be sure to make sustainability easy for your guests – because it might slip their minds! Here are some ways to combine COVID-safe and green-thinking.
- Provide recycling bins for disposable masks and gloves.
- Go paperless to avoid unnecessary touching of surfaces, and to decrease waste.
- Rather than providing water in plastic bottles, give your guests reusable water bottles. This way, you reduce the touching of unnecessary surfaces with many people touching the same water bottles. And, you avoid creating excess plastic waste. What makes this suggestion even better is that you can add your branding to the reusable bottles, for a little bit of a marketing initiative!
- Host your events outside if possible. This allows you to reduce the use of electricity and air conditioning, and at the same time can prevent the spread of the virus.
The suggestions above are not too taxing to implement, and can significantly increase both the eco-friendliness and the safety of your event. When you’re setting up, keep these tips in mind!
The Bottom Line
Maintaining the sustainable event trend does not have to be difficult. The momentum of the sustainability movement has not died down. As such, we should all continue implementing eco-friendly practices. By using the guide in this article, you can easily ensure that your events are as green as they can be.
COVID-19 has changed many things about the way we live and interact, but it has not diminished people’s motivation to live in an environmentally friendly way. It may have an impact on the way events are run, and we will have to continue taking precautions, but these are manageable! All we need to do is think ahead, and plan appropriately
And, don’t forget to reach out to EnterAnGo! We can help you to make event travel as sustainable as possible.