10 years of a Positive Impact
2015 marks 10 years since the launch of Positive Impact- a not for profit set up to create education and collaboration opportunities to create a sustainable event industry. So what can we learn from the last 10 years about what the next 10 years could look like?
As any global champions for change around the world will know it is easy to always focus on what needs to happen next, rather than sitting back with satisfaction musing over how far you have come. Change always begins with a few small, insignificant actions and the start of Positive Impact was no different. 10 years ago I was managing an event in Manchester at a venue that had been particularly chosen because they said they would provide different bins for different types of rubbish. I was a young(er) and definitely naive event manager and freshly returned from spending time in Austin, Texas where environmentally friendly and socially inclusive initiatives were the norm for leading business’. So I believed the Manchester venue when they smiled and nodded through my bin, tap water and recycleable cup questions. The morning of the event saw me removing non recycleable cups, creating my own labels for bins and positioning staff members by the bins to stop the staff merging recycleable and non recycleable waste. Ten years ago I thought sustainability made business sense and so it would be obvious that every event industry business would be doing it- who wouldn’t want to save money by reducing waste and build better customer and staff relations by giving back to the community. I still believe this but I saw ten years ago that there was not enough education, access to best practice and case studies to catalyse a change and so Positive Impact was born.
So what learnings can I share from the last 10 years? My naive expectation that every event industry business understands sustainability has been replaced by a confidence and commitment to suggest changes that the industry should consider:
- Sustainability makes business sense but not every business is prepared to think long term enough to get that. Educating your team on understanding and addressing their sustainability issues will decrease your future overheads (less waste, less spending on materials and happier staff being more productive). Sustainability is a new budget line item and its business case is still being built so anyone waiting for lots of evidence before taking action is losing money.
- Future generations will expect sustainability
Over the last 10 years I have spent days worth of time being interviewed for student dissertations. Each student has been passionate about the industry they are joining making a social, environmental and economic difference. These inspirational people are not just the future budget holders of the event industry they are the strategy creators and voice of the industry through the medium of social media and the power of technology.
Following them is the next generation who have all learnt about sustainability at school (the only presentation I have given where people have recognised a worm farm at an event was to a class of 7 year olds). - The event industry is risking ALOT by being slow to embrace this. We are a global industry that depends on international travel. Carbon emissions caused by airplane travel is a significant factor for climate change. Carbon emissions from travel is beyond the control of most event organisers but we could be taking action on things within our control (food waste, Material use and reuse, mass local transport options). When the spotlight falls on our industry as a key contributor to global carbon emissions and we can’t even say we took action where we could its going to be embarrassing and economically dangerous.
- We are a global industry with global frameworks to implement sustainability, yet our ego often wins out and we like to create our ‘own thing’.
We are the only industry that has an ISO standard just for our industry and this standard is one of the first sustainability standards in the world. There is also a reporting framework for the event industry from the Global Reporting Initiative who are recognised as global leaders in sustainability reporting.
How easy it could be to take an international sport event or association meeting from one country to another and maintain a consistent approach to sustainability. Instead there is a plethora of hotel standards, country standards and a general confusion of labels which makes it challenging to know if you have a consistent approach.
As our experience and ability to measure our impact increases this focus should overtake the local labels and as sport, business and government leaders embrace a global approach the industry will learn to match local initiatives with international frameworks. They can all work together. - Current budget holders don’t understand the financial opportunities that sustainability brings.
If they did every business in the event industry supply chain would be training their staff, sharing their sustainability learnings with their clients and providing measurement reports after every event. - Our environment will make the choices for us
The Brundtland definition of sustainability is often used:
‘not compromising the needs of the future with the needs of the present’
This definition points to the fact that we have finite resources and every action we take now influences our future. So every event that has new carpeting, gives away freebies or wastes food is taking that from our future generations. (As a side note imagine the cost savings if there was no new carpet, freebies and the food ordered was exactly what was eaten- its a win win). - There is a relationship between female leadership and sustainability
So I declare a bias here- I’m female and for years I have been fascinated about the many examples of female leadership within sustainability. Some say it is because women have stronger nurture skills I’m tempted to say it is because of female creative and innovation skills that enable us to think differently but I’ve met male leaders with those skills too! - Technology will make measuring and telling the story about sustainability easy
Through the power of social media we are now one global community and this gives us the opportunity not just to share our learnings (as we continue to explore with our Share a Positive Impact Campaign) but come together to voice our desire for change as the recent CSR Share Day demonstrated. - Sustainability is more than ‘the new health and safety’
Describing it this way overlooks the creative opportunities which are possible from taking a new approach to social, economical and environmental challenges. For example: food packaging made from wax or sugar, business’ securing customers through their social values more than the love for the product and letting people pay what they think a product is worth. Sustainability is not a checklist of things to be done it is a mindset for thinking beyond the economic impact. - Sustainability could be the event industry’s opportunity to show global, world changing leadership
This belief has driven me over the last 10 years (and I hope will drive me for the next 10).
The event industry is full of passionate, collaborative, inspirational people who understand the when we meet we change the world (as Meeting Professionals International say).
All we need is to continue to take action, start to step into the risky area of trying things we may never have done before and lead by example. Sustainability is an issue for all industries and it is a beautiful opportunity for the event industry to demonstrate the power and importance of the work we do.
