8 ways to make your next corporate event more sustainable
Written by
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Sofia BogunovicBrand Content Manager at TravelPerk
Events of any kind, whether they're corporate events or leisure events, leave behind a significant impact. Large groups coming together can have a negative impact on the environment, neighboring communities, and even local economies. They can accumulate significant amounts of waste, create a large carbon footprint, strain local resources like water or energy, and even generate tension with local communities.
The next time you're planning a corporate wellness retreat, large-scale meeting, or event for your business, think about introducing some of these sustainability practices:
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Waste management is one of the biggest challenges faced by the events and meetings industries. Just think about it—with things like plastic cups, huge amounts of food, and paper decorations (to name a few), the garbage quite literally piles up. That's why a good tip going forward would be to try to make your events "zero waste", or "zeewees".
Yes, planes are comfortable. Yes, they do get you where you need to go quickly. But they are responsible for a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Why not consider organizing your next event somewhere a little closer to home, so employees can travel there by rail, for example?
Did you know that globally we waste around 1.4 billion tons of food every year? And no, that's not a typo. Organizing a green meeting is about more than just recycling and traveling by train. It's also about providing the right amount of food for your attendees so that huge amounts don't go uneaten.
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Why not take your teams out into nature to enjoy an eco-lodge, dude ranch, or self-sufficient hotel? Not only will you be making the right choice for the environment, but you'll also be doing your employees a favor by putting their well-being front and center as they immerse themselves in nature.
If you really think about it, it's not just the event as a whole that could stand to be a little more sustainable. It's the meetings themselves. Just consider how many paper products we use in a standard meeting—notebooks, loose papers, paper cups, and paper easels, to name a few.
Make sure your upcoming green event isn't just a one-off. Enshrine any best practices you come across into your company's sustainability policy so that this becomes your standard modus operandi.
Support responsible businesses that have made a commitment to the planet to put it first. Fairtrade standards are fairly rigorous and require any certified company to protect the environment and the workers they employ.
Gone are the days of companies thinking it's enough to set up a few green initiatives to include in their CSR report. Stakeholders of all kinds are growing increasingly interested in sustainable behaviors at companies. In fact, about 40% of millennials report having chosen a job in large part because of their sustainability practices. You need to include sustainability in everything you do. Anything short of that is just not enough.
Sofia BogunovicBrand Content Manager at TravelPerk
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