Looking to organise a greener event, then this article has all the Top Event Sustainability Tips for you to take a step in that direction.
This article provides 5 top event sustainability tips that will definitely help you out on planning a more sustainable event.
FIRST TIP ON EVENT SUSTAINABILITY
FOLLOW THE
PLANT-BASED TREND
A Plant-based diet or food choice is one of the biggest trends at the moment. More and more people have chosen the vegan lifestyle to benefit from its healthy benefits, help out the animals or for environmental reasons.
Veganuary, is one of the biggest trends and challenges that people take at the beginning of the year. And after a whole month of following a plant-based diet they then just carry on with this food preference. Making it a huge trend. This year alone 582,538 people signed-up to the challenge making it the biggest year yet.
In terms of your next event if you are trying to make it a conscious decision of turning it into a green and sustainable event, having a plant-based menu is the way to go. The impact that your event would have on carbon emissions, water consumption & deforestation would reduce by a large amount.
However, not everyone is ready for that vegan life, which is understandable. And when you are organising an event you have to consider your guests and not all of them are ready to give up their meat consumption.
So our suggestion in this case, is to just reduce the amount of meat you are providing with the menu. Simply by swapping some of the meat by plant-based options. This will already help your event’s environmental impact greatly. This is definitely one of the biggest event sustainability tips.
SECOND TIP ON EVENT SUSTAINABILITY
CHOOSE LOCAL &
SEASONAL FOOD
When you choose a menu for you event, a good thing to check is what food is being served, or being offered to you to choose from.
A good way to keep your food choices sustainable is by choosing seasonal foods and enquiring if they are sourced locally.
The reason why you would want choose a seasonal menu is because the vegetables or legumes provided will come from local farm; it also helps your local economy, and it avoids shipping from other countries.
Locally produced foods, also tend to be taken care by more conscious and ethical farmers. They focus more on the quality of the food rather than mass production.
These two simple menu choices if taken into consideration, will help your event be more sustainable.
THIRD TIP ON EVENT SUSTAINABILITY
REDUCE
SINGLE USE ITEMS
Single use items is probably what we see the most on events. Such as, plastic cups, coffee cups, plastic stirrers, plastic cutlery and so on.
So when you next plan your event, take these things into consideration. Instead of offering take away coffee cups way not just ask the caterers to provide mugs? It is way more environmentally conscious. Same with the plastic cups (these are normally used on water stations) just request for actual glasses to be provided, it will look so much more elegant and environmentally friendly.
So, to sum up just try your up most not to provide single use items, especially because these are made of plastic and can not be easily recycled.
However, if you do need to provide single use items, consider other materials, such as, bamboo, wood or paper. Materials that can easily decompose. A great company that can provide these is Vegware. We have seen their materials being used in many events and we highly recommend – great quality.
FOURTH TIP ON EVENT SUSTAINABILITY
PROVIDE
REUSABLE ITEMS
Many events provide their guests with some branded items to take home or even just to be used around the venue during their events.
These can be branded coffee cups, or notepads or pens. Once we saw an event providing branded plastic water bottles to all of their guests – the waste at the end was ridiculous but mostly sad.
So, if you are looking into being more sustainable but also want your guests to take something memorable home (or to have something to walk around the venue with) that has the company’s name; then why not provide travelling coffee cups at the coffee stations or water bottles at the water stations? Guests will use these throughout the day and take them home after the event and reuse them as their own travelling mug/bottle. Also a great way to advertise said event or the company outside.
If you do want branded and reusable items we would just recommend a small logo. This way it is not too on your face and people will actually want to reuse it afterwards rather than ending up in the bin.
Same goes with stationary, everyone enjoys the occasional note pad and pen that they can take home. To then use as their work diary or personal notepad. These are great items to give out as favours at your next event. Just remember, maybe only use the companies name as part of the branding; and do not provide any specific dates or events so that if there are any leftover you can always give them out at your next event.
The key idea here is to reuse items and reduce waste.
FIFTH TIP ON EVENT SUSTAINABILITY
REDUCE
FOOD WASTE
Trying to reduce your event food waste can be challenging, but it is not impossible.
On buffet style meals most times there is food leftover, and the majority of this ends up in a waste bin. This is because the food would have been served for the duration of the lunch/dinner break. Normally food can only stay out for 2 hours maximum – due to health and safety. So once that time is up the food has to be thrown away for safety.
To try and reduce the food waste you should try and reduce the quantity of food that you will provide the guests. Sometimes it won’t be possible because you are organising a new event and don’t really know how much food the guests will actually eat. So you should reduce the food quantities of an event if it is a repeat.
Another way of reducing your food waste is by organising a food collection from a food charity at the end of your event. This way any food that has not been eaten can be given to a charity of choice and it won’t end up being wasted.
Finding a solution to help reduce your food waste will help your event being more sustainable. Because you will be preventing the waste ending up in a landfill.
Event Sustainability Conclusion
So these are our 5 top Event Sustainability Tips, that anyone should take into consideration when organising an event. Just by doing these 5 little things you will most definitely reduce your environmental impact; and have a much greener event.
If you would like to learn more about event sustainability I suggest you take on our course: How to Plan a Green & Sustainable Event. This course has many more tips and advice on how to make your next event a sustainable one.
Also, if you would like some free event resources, sign up to our newsletter on our Event Toolkit page.
