Sustainability comes at a hefty price – or does it? This Recycle Awareness Week, ESSA member David Humphreys of Green Circle Solutions talks to Exhibition News about why it doesn’t have to cost more to get on board with sustainability.

What does it mean to be sustainable? If you were to ask several different people in a room the same question, I guarantee you would receive a different answer from each.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it highlights how there is no one simple route to being sustainable and that it can be a complicated endeavour, especially for businesses just starting their sustainability journey. 

Unfortunately, due to there being no one-size-fits-all approach, it’s easy for those within the events industry to fall victim to the many myths surrounding sustainability. Namely, these include the belief that being more sustainable is too difficult to effectively measure and manage, and that doing so also costs a lot of money.

Being sustainable isn’t always easy, but nothing important ever is. The good news is that there are steps businesses can take to be more sustainable without breaking the bank.

The cost of time

The get started, you simply need an investment of time to analyse how your business operates, and support for this review must come from the very top.

We work with businesses that employ us to do a policy and plan and then think that’s it – they’re sustainable. Whilst we can suggest tools and templates, ultimately sustainability must become embedded in the culture of a business, hence the need for it to come from the top with both authority and passion.

Once you have an overview of how your business operates, you can start asking questions about what you’ve found. We often find that businesses are surprised at what they find once they start asking the right questions and it also throws up other things that they could be doing differently to save costs and drive better revenue.

This is an area where ESSA is leading and supporting, firstly with a comprehensive Sustainability Accreditation, an independently audited accreditation that requires annual renewal, as well as a face-to-face Sustainability Awareness training course, facilitated by Green Circle Solutions. The course focuses on all key knowledge areas of sustainability theory and practice and is designed to enable members to build their sustainability roadmap with ease whilst dispelling the myths surrounding how complicated it needs to be.

Communication is key

One thing we often see is businesses not engaging with their suppliers or customers. With just a few simple emails, you’ll soon find out which suppliers can help support you on your sustainability journey, and in fact, may offer products and services that are more sustainable but that you didn’t know about because you’ve previously been driven by lowest cost.

Many of the outcomes you find will have some cost involved, but effective planning can help you determine which ones can be implemented quickly without impacting the bottom line, and which ones may require a little more time and investment.

Measuring your impact

There is a noticeable desire for improvement across the events industry and you’ll want to ensure questions around your sustainability credentials can be something you’re proud to share rather than being an admin burden.

Whilst sustainability is not all about carbon, we find that undertaking a thorough carbon calculation across a business identifies areas for simple improvements. Companies can undertake their own carbon calculations using free-to-access emissions factor databases or use calculation tools that ensure calculations follow best practice.

Finally, we really must get a grip on our waste management across the industry, especially from the show floor. This will require a much greater level of collaboration between all stakeholders, but venues and organisers must take a far greater share of responsibility for resolving this issue. The spotlight this week is on recycling which is a vital part of our waste management strategy, but we regularly find that businesses believe that by recycling they are sustainable. Recycling is simply a form of waste management. Ultimately waste is not the problem, waste is a result of the problem – the problem being poor briefs and specification, poor planning and poor design. We must design out waste!

Ultimately, businesses should be doing what they can, and it doesn’t have to cost the earth. Just taking a step back, identifying what changes can be made, and communicating with the right people can lead to some remarkable results.

Published in Exhibition News on 20 September 2023