This week I’ve been thinking a lot about how many people it takes to pull off a successful event.
I’m in awe of the way that all the moving parts of an event come together to create an immersive experience.
For many events it takes a small army. Rarely does any aspect of an event get successfully completed by a single person.
Just like food service and decorations take teams of people to envision and execute, so does sustainability. Because sustainability is more than a deliverable: it’s a mindset.
It absolutely helps to have a point person in charge of sustainable initiatives, like recycling and composting programs, or donations of leftover food and floral arrangements.
But for the event industry to become more sustainable as a whole, the teams planning each aspect of an event need to undergo a shift in mindset.
This shift doesn’t have to be daunting. Start by asking yourself these simple questions:
- What is the environmental impact of the solution I’m considering? If I don’t know, can I find out?
- What am I trying to accomplish with this solution?
- Is there an alternative solution that would meet the same goal with a smaller environmental impact?
When you’re procuring supplies, it can help to frame the questions this way:
- How many times will this item be used?
- Is there an alternative that can be reused more times?
- If a reusable version isn’t an option, is there a recyclable or compostable alternative?
Asking yourself these questions will help reveal the opportunities you have to make an event more sustainable, even if you’re only working on one aspect of it.
When each team on an event shifts their thinking, the environmental footprint of the entire event, and the events industry, is improved.
How can you start incorporating these questions into your process? (If asking yourself these questions gives you an idea for sustainability you’ve never had before, let me know—I would love to hear about it!)
Want to shift your team into a sustainable mindset? Schedule a sustainable event planning workshop for your team.