2012 Sustainability Reporting Trends

One of the hot trends we stated for 2012 was the growth of sustainability reporting. So were we right in our prediction and did the tide turn?

Well no – not exactly. It may not have gone mainstream but there was definitely a growth in reporting in the event industry and more importantly an improvement in report quality. Hotels have been doing a good job for a few years, but this year saw the launch of the first venue reports. On the event side, we did not see so many event sustainability reports produced. But there were some good ones produced. Here is a list of some of my favourite reports and what I look for in a good report.

What makes a good event sustainability report:

• Not too long: keep it short and to the point
• Well designed and creative so that it makes you want to read it and go beyond the front cover. I love the growing integration of video and interactiveness.
• Honest. Tells the bad things and not just the shiny stories.
• Focus on material issues. Its so easy to use the GRI framework and start reporting about things that have absolutely no real relevance to your event. Focus on the key points: carbon emissions, waste, procurement policy, community engagement etc
• Holistic: Sustainability is about people, planet and profit. Good reports should cover these three areas in an integrated fashion and not just the green initiatives.
• Good graphs and benchmarking. I like to see data and also to see it benchmarked against other similar events, or ideally against the same event.
• Real stories: I love seeing people’s faces and hearing the stories from the real people implementing sustainability

My top reports realised in 2012 that were not written by us were:

• The London 2012 Olympics
• IMEX USA
• The MeetGreen Corporate Sustainability report
• Oracle Openworld Sustainability report

Reports written by us:

• MCI 2011 Sustainability Report: Really unique use of integrated video and animation.
• Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum
• European Ecology Federation
• Shanghai Fashion Show
• ICCA Scandinavian Sustainability Index

We use the GRI EOSS guidelines a lot in our work. They help to provide structure, and while they may at first seem very complicated – you can use as a reference sheet. More info here: However if you really want to know about Sustainability Reporting – why don’t you come to the Global Conference on Sustainability and Reporting that we are helping to organise in May 2013. www.griconference.org

What are your favourite event reports? What are your top tips? Please let us know. It is time more people other than MCI and MeetGreen were producing and publicly sharing event sustainability reports.