• Leadership
• Strategy
• Stakeholder engagement
• Operational integration
• Good governance

It refers to our work on the EU Presidency. That you can read about here:

Together with Lucy Goodchild of the Global Reporting Initiative, we ran a workshop that looked at the how associations can increase member value through sustainability. We looked at how global change is effecting associations, and how they can and should respond to support their members with the increasing demand for new knowledge, skills, tools, advocacy and commitment.  In the ppt you will see case studies from various associations around the world.

Let us know what you think?

“Convention Bureaus, Destination Marketing Organizations, Venues and Agencies from the five Scandinavian member countries of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) today signed an Accord to create the world´s first sustainable meetings region. The Accord is the first of its kind in the world. It is a document outlining 10 specific actions to which all signatories commit, aims to advance sustainable development within the meetings and events industry.”

This project is unique in its scale and collaborative nature. For the last two years we have been working with leaders of the Scandinavian meetings industry to define a shared vision for the future of meetings and events.  Now we already have over 45 leaders from 15 destinations across Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Finland who, with their signature, commit to taking action to measure and benchmark impacts, share knowledge, create products to help clients and develop socially responsible community action projects.

A benchmarking system has been developed using 18 performance indicators to assess the sustainability of infrastructure and practices within the destinations. The system is in a pilot phase, and a full report will be released at the IMEX tradeshow in May.

It is so refreshing and rewarding to work with the ICCA chapter, and be able to have helped them advance towards a more sustainable future.

Click to read the full press release and see the Accord.

Here is the presentation from todays workshop. it contains some facts and figures and trends info..

In continuation on our series of posts about reporting, we have a great announcement to make: From today event organizers around the world now have a new tool that can help them to report on economic, environmental and social sustainability issues.

The new guidelines have been developed by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and a group of volunteers (including me) from events companies, governments, labour and civil society organizations. Together we have worked together for 2 years to develop the guidance. The public then responded to two Public Comment Periods, before the Working Group took the consultation feedback into account and finalized the Supplement.

Today’s new Event Organizers Sector Supplement (EOSS) will help event organizers to report their sustainability performance in a comparable way. The sustainability reporting guidance, specifically tailored for the events sector, aims to make reporting more relevant for event organizers by defining how to provide qualitative and quantitative information on sustainability issues. In addition to more widely applicable issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste, the guidance helps event organizers report on more specific issues including attendee travel, legacy of the event, and initiatives taken at the event to promote sustainability and transparency.

Why report?

It is becoming increasingly important, and is often required, to disclose an organizations impacts (see our post about reporting trends). With trust at an all time low, Stakeholders require more transparency and accountability from corporations, associations and governments. Local communities and event attendees are increasingly interested to know the sustainability strategies behind events and the resulting impacts.

Who is it for?

The Event Organizers Sector Supplement provides reporting guidance that is suitable for all types and sizes of events. The guidance covers the complete project life cycle of an event, from bid to planning, execution and, finally, post-event – including the issue of event legacy. The Supplement can be used to report before or after an event has taken place. So an agency like MCI could use it for its own company report or for one of its events.

What are the benefits?

According to Sebastien Tondeur, our CEO here at MCI and Chairman of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), “transparent reporting is fundamental to organization success and growth.” At MCI we have seen some of the associated benefits include:

• Brand enhancement and associated economic benefits
• Financial savings resulting from increased monitoring and evaluation of resource use
• Increased understanding of potential economic, environmental and social impacts
• Ability to benchmark and compare data
• Risk avoidance

Reporting is also about sharing best practices and can enhance learning for event organizers not yet so familiar with sustainability strategy and reporting. This can help to advance innovation and the event experience.

So what exactly is it?

The Event Organizers Sector Supplement is a guidance document that enables event organizers to provide qualitative and quantitative information on their sustainability performance. The Supplement is an amended and expanded version of GRI’s G3.1 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. It has three sections that provide guidance on:

• Profile: How to disclose your events or organisations strategy, profile, and governance structures.
• Management Approach: How an event organiser addresses a given set of sustainability topics in order to provide context for understanding performance in a specific area.
• Performance Indicators: Specific indicators that elicit comparable information on the economic, environmental, and social performance of the organization and/or event.

Is it very complicated?

Yes and no. Its up to you. Currently GRI recommend that you report based on one of three application levels: A, B, C.

• For C level: an organizer needs to use report fully on at least 10 Performance Indicators, either core or additional, including at least one from each Indicator Dimension (Economic, Environmental, and Social).
• For B Level: an organizer needs to report on Profile Disclosures, Management Approach (DMAs), and at least 20 Performance Indicators, including at least one from each Indicator Category (Economic, Environmental, Labor Practices and Decent Work, Human Rights, Society and Product Responsibility).
• A level is the works: basically you need to report on all aspects and indicators in the guidelines.

Where do I start? Do you have any examples

Michael and I have written over 25 reports for MCI and our clients, here are some recommendations with examples:

• For Beginners: Look at the guidelines and choose a handful of performance indicators that you think are relevant and useful to disclose. You don’t need to do a full C level to start. The most important thing is to start, and the guidelines will help give you structure, indicators and advice. Here are a couple of examples:

o UN Global Compact Leaders Summit Report

o Shanghai Fashion Week Sustainability Report

• For organizations who have started to report on their events or organisations, aim at doing a C level report. Consider getting an application level check from GRI.

o MCI 2010 Sustainability Report

o UN COP15 Climate Change Conference

• For advanced reporters, go for gold: Get it verified and assured.

o London 2012 Olympics Sustainability Report

o 2010 Vancouver Olympics

For more information and to download the guidelines

In a future post we will look at best practice in reporting, verification and share a few tips and tricks…

In the meantime, please share insights and experiences, concerns and questions, related to reporting event impacts.

Up to now, there has been very few organisations who have conducted a sustainability report about their event or about their events organisation. A few valiant agencies such as MeetGreen, Organise This, and MCI have lead the way, supporting a few visionary corporates such as Oracle, Cisco, Google, and even fewer associations such as MPI, EWEA and the AIDS Society. Thankfully the mega international events have been a beacon of activity with the World Cup, London Olympics and Vancouver Olympics amongst others showing the way. But could this be changing? Could we see event sustainability reporting go beyond the niche to a mainstream activity? We believe it will. But the key questions is perhaps not if but “ when we will see a tipping point” and “how can we accelerate this transition”.

The following are a four trends that we foresee to be driving this shift in event reporting:

1. Corporate sustainability reporting goes mainstream

The 2011 KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting clearly shows how the disclosure of social and environmental strategies and results is coming of age. 95% of the 250 largest companies in the world (G250 companies) now report on their corporate responsibility (CR) activities, and 64% of the N100 (hundred largest companies in each of the 34 largest economies) conduct CR reporting. Since 2008 KPMG calculate an increase in reporting of 14% in the G250 and 11% in the N100. The Global Reporting Initiative has become the defacto standard for reporting: with 80 percent of G250 and 69 percent of N100 companies now aligning to the GRI G3 reporting standards.

In addition governments and stockmarkets around the world are studying and implementing mandatory reporting. In their last report GRI calculate that there are over 142 reporting initiatives in over 30 countries, with mandatory reporting in over 16 countries including South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Denmark. This is set to increase and we expect to see more announcement around the Rio+20 conference. For more info see this good GRI presentation on reporting Trends.

2. Increase in Scope 3 emissions disclosure:

Many companies are already measuring their Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions and reporting these through the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). These are the emissions from their direct operations and their use of electricity. But over 75% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by most companies’ products and services are not accounted for in Scope 1 and Scope 2. These are included in scope 3 emissions and include the indirect impacts from the value chain including the emissions of business travel and events.

There is a significant trend towards increased scope3 reporting and this is set to continue they offer significant cost reduction and disruptive innovation opportunities. In 2009, 59% of the Global 500 responded who responded to the CDP provided some information on their Scope 3 emissions, while over 87% reported there scope 1 emissions. Last year, an impressive 72% of companies communicated on scope 3 (impressive when it was less than 25% five years ago). One of the reasons for the low reporting levels was the lack of any clear standard or guidelines for disclosure scope 3 emissions. However, this has changed and as of October 2011 a new GHG accounting standards is now available from the GHG Protocol Initiative entitled the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard. This standards take a value chain approach to accounting for GHG emissions and allow companies to report Scope 3 emissions on a clearer and more consistent basis through The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: In the next few years we will see a significant increase in what companies will measure, manage, and report beyond their own operations.

Thankfully new sustainability measurement tools in the meetings industry provide guidance and support to simplify the measurement and reporting process. Check out the high end MeetGreen calculator and the mid-range tool provided by MPI – SEMT. Expect corporate sustainability reporting gurus – EQ2 to enter the travel and meetings market with their tool Evolution in 2012.

3. Greater understanding of the value of sustainability reporting

The process of writing and disclosing a corporate sustainability report has many benefits that now are become widely recognised. From the KPMG report, reputational or brand considerations top the list of business benefits (cited by 67 percent of the G250), while ethical considerations came second at 58%, and innovation and learning at 44%. For the sustainable event reporting through our extensive experience, we have seen that the top 3 benefits are

• Reduced Reputational Risk: Communicate to stakeholders that the organisation is concerned about environmental issues
• Engagement: Allows an organisation to engage suppliers and staff (and to a lesser degree clients) with their sustainability strategy, sharing best practices and results. This is been our experience at MCI and we have seen a significant improvement in engagement since the beginning of the year when we switched to quarterly reporting.
• Understanding: Most corporates or associations have no clue about the environmental or social impact of their events. Too few track their economic impacts and ROI. Measuring enables better management of all elements from delegate satisfaction, to safety to waste and community outreach.

4. Launch of event specific sustainability standards

2012 will see the launch and proliferation of three voluntary meeting and events industry standards/frameworks. The ISO 20121 standard for sustainable event management systems ,the APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Event Organizer Sector Supplement (EOSS). All three easy to say pronounce frameworks, require and recommend measurement, reporting and public disclosure to some degree. In particular the GRI EOSS which we will launch on the 24th January in London, provides tailored guidance on how and what an event organize should report on. This includes economic and governance issues as well as widely applicable issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste, attendee travel, legacy of the event, and initiatives taken at the event to promote sustainability and transparency.

Not if but when!

We believe event reporting will become mainstream to some extent. But the key questions are when and to what degree. So far there very few organisations reporting. At MCI we have produced our own annual report for the last 2 years, created over 30 sustainable event reports for our institutional clients, but have never had a corporate client who has asked for this service.

So how do we accelerate this transition to greater industry reporting? What constitutes a good sustainability report? How do we make it simpler and easier? We will leave those points for another post in the near future.

Finally, to quote my boss, Sebastien Tondeur, CEO of MCI and Chairman of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), “transparent reporting is fundamental to organization success and growth”.

As always – any thoughts and comments on this “rather long” post are welcome.

GUY BIGWOOD

MCI Group Sustainability Director

The idea was simple enough.  Rather than deliver the minimum effort to be compliant with the UN Global Compact Communications on Progress requirement, we’d take additional steps to conduct measurements of the known sustainability impacts of our business.  We would, we mused, create a report which complied with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) criteria for transparent communication of our company’s business performance.

What started as a simple concept proved, in actuality, to be a long and challenging process of data mining and fact chasing across 45 offices, 22 countries and hundreds of people. We simply, did not have any processes installed to allow us to conduct accurate measurement of our social and environmental impacts.

Now that its done, the difficulties we experienced, had the unexpected result of creating elevated engagement from our team and a valuable revamp of – and renewed commitment to – our sustainable business strategy.  The process of evaluating our business strategy along with the operational impacts of our business was an opportunity to gain active participation from people within the organization who didn’t previously see their direct connection to sustainable business practices.

This infusion of new ideas and new energy from a broad cross section of our company also meant that the process of completing the report required a greater investment of time.  But we wouldn’t trade that experience to have done it any faster.  It was this very process of completing forms and asking questions and following up with different offices, which delivered the greatest insights, helping us to identify barriers to success and build a stronger culture of sustainability. But dont´just take my word for it: here is a video of our CEO Sebastien Tondeur, communicating the report to our staff last week:

Like many things the first time is always a challenge. We have already started to prepare our 2011 report and we are now improving and creating new and more integrated processes that will allow us to collect data simply and easily. The next report will be much better and less stressful to produce.

Pioneering Work

Although this is our second report, it is our first to be GRI checked. We believe that we are the first international meetings and events agency to complete a sustainability report which meets GRI criteria for transparent communication of business performance. It also uses a draft of the new GRI Event Organisers Sector Supplement which we have been involved in creating.

While we are very proud of that, we understand that the real value of reporting isn’t in the PR of showing that we’re compliant with GRI standards or even by providing a helpful example for others in the industry, the real value is the process itself which step by step, is helping us make a better company.

You can read our report here  and we very much welcome your suggestions, criticism and ideas to improve this disclosure.

There’s a parallel, here, to recent thinking on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting.  In her just published article, Elaine Cohen recaps the recent Redefining Value: Integrated Reporting and Measuring Sustainability Conference which shares, among many great facts and figures, some insights for making sustainability reporting common practice.

Some argue that only government imposed regulation (‘eat it or else’) can inspire organizations to consistently share performance data publicly.  Others want markets to lead this initiative, leaving individual business to define what and how they’ll report (‘only take what you want’).  Which method produces a healthier business?

Like a kid who squirms and resists eating broccoli the first time, only to later discover that they like it, corporations who produce CSR reports for the first time experience a feeling of discovery, saying the process was beneficial to their business.    Like eating your vegetables, the benefits of integrated sustainability reporting are real…and important.. and worth pursuing.

Is it unreasonable, then, that meeting planners might also experience a similar sense of enlightened discovery in pursuing sustainable event reporting? And experience the improved stakeholder trust and improvement in business practice which inevitably follows thoughtful reporting?

Can this practice fuel a movement to integrate sustainability into the very design of the event itself (rather than having sustainability be seen as a complicated afterthought)? And bring needed improvements to an industry which struggles with uniform application of sustainable business practice?

Will the meetings industry eat its vegetables?

10.  The app.  Rapid uptake of smart phones and cool apps to help planners and suppliers integrate a wide array of services and communications in a user-friendly and paper-free way. This link offers a long list of viable apps for planners and, of course this one, too.

09. Food Banks. Creatively finding ways to bridge the gap between food safety and waste, a number of local food banks have been successful in receiving safe, unserved food from events which would otherwise have been wasted. We were inspired to see over 3000 meals go to communities in need during EWEC 2010, Warsaw

08. CVB Leadership.  Struggling for relevance in some communities, many CVB/DMO’s saw opportunity in not only promoting the sustainable features of their city, but worked to build capacity through the sponsorship of education and involvement in groups like the Green Meeting Industry Council

07. Community Action.  Sustainable events go beyond ‘green meetings’ by having effective plans to bring consideration, if not reward, to people in the communities they visit. Although not yet mainstream, many (such as UUA here and *blush* our own here) events are working to include ‘giving back’ programs.

06. Recycled carpets. The Carpet America Recovery Effort estimates that in 2009, 311 million (141M kilos) of carpet (of the 5.9 billion pounds thrown away) were recycled in the USA alone. That was a 19 million pound improvement over 2008, but way, way short of the goal of 40% of total carpet discarded.  Clearly, that huge pile of waste is not entirely from events/exhibitions, but carpet waste is something of a dirty secret in the meetings industry and it’s encouraging to see major players (IMEX, as one example) including plans to reduce carpet use and/or recycling what is used.

05. Hybrid events. Concerns that an integration of virtual elements (live streaming, video links, e.g.) will reduce attendance or bring risk for planners (reliability, cost) –or that virtual events would somehow push aside the need for face to face meetings–seemed to wane in 2010 as many events reported successful initiatives to blend face to face meetings with virtual elements, thereby creating ‘hybrid’ events. Still expensive and still not glitch-free, hybrid events are established as an industry mega-trend.

04. Exhibitor Engagement.  Exhibitions represent great waste, both material and carbon emissions. Efforts, such as those deployed by US Green Build, to engage exhibitors with education and incentive gained some traction in 2010 in spite of this being a sensitive area as planners are not keen to reduce booth space or put limits on sponsor investment.

03. Integrated carbon tracking tools. Practical, smart tools became accepted in 2010 and are being integrated into event registration systems allowing not only greater capture of delegate travel data but also increasing the amount of investment into carbon offset projects.

02. Sustainable Event Reporting.  Perhaps the only real cure against ‘greenwashing’ is effective and transparent reporting.  From the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit to Oracle Open World to the aforementioned EWEC 2010, diverse and influential organizers showed the importance of measuring and reporting sustainable event results.

01. The emergence of standards for sustainable event management. Actually a story from 2009, but continuing into 2010 and 2011 has been the development and release of standards which define criteria for sustainable event management.  Work was completed to advance the Global Reporting Initiative event sector supplement, the APEX green meeting standards and the ISO 20121 standard for sustainability in event management as well as the Copenhagen Sustainable Meetings Protocol which seeks to integrate and advance the use of each.

The above listed highlights from 2010 bring optimism that 2011 can build on this momentum and perhaps even ‘turn the corner’ for greater, more meaningful action in pursuit of sustainable events by an even greater number of suppliers and planners.  These 2010 highlights, indicate emerging trends for 2011—and beyond—because they represent advantage and benefit to event owners and planners. Each highlight listed here helps to build the business case for an improved, more responsible event industry which can continue to bring reward to communities everywhere.  Thinking that the meetings industry can bring real change across all market sectors is inspiring but such optimism must be fuel for greater effort.

Risk lurks in 2011.  Economies are struggling and people are busy.  Change is difficult. People want action but wait for others to deliver it.  A unbalanced focus on environmental responsibility may compromise needed advancement of social justice.

2011 is here and, for sustainable meetings and events, it’s time we turned the corner.

What highlights did we miss?  What examples need to be shared?  Please share your examples and thoughts here and, if at all possible, make a plan to attend the Green Meeting Industry Council’s Sustainable Meetings Conference next month in Portland, OR, USA and MPI’s European Meetings & Events conference, Dusseldorf, where, among other relevant sessions we’ll  hold a workshop on engaging suppliers for sustainable event success.

Once again its great to see Pedro and his team at the Congress Center in Estoril lead the way. They are truly a global reference in how transformation can happen. What follows is the keynote presentation, update about standards and then some great case studies. Enjoy!

Today, in corporate reporting circles, such an approach is called “Transparency” and it occurred to me as I read this article shared by MeetGreen’s twitter feed.  The rest of this post will make more sense of you read the actual article, but at issue is a hotel who earned uncomfortable attention for their ‘green’ initiative to reduce the total guest rooms cleaned each day, thereby ostensibly reducing the energy and water required to support the cleaning.  This initiative has also had the effect of reducing the weekly earning of the housekeeping team, which is where the drama begins.

I feel this train wreck can be a nice example for how organizations often get sustainable business wrong

(in no particular order)

• Stakeholder Engagement. (on a limb here) The organization likely did not engage affected audiences before rolling out the program.  By not providing some background and/or getting their ownership (or at least a notice), they more readily open themselves up to employee backlash.  Perhaps theirs is not a culture where such a discussion/presentation would have been deemed welcome but, as has been proven elsewhere,  employee groups more easily support tough or smart business decisions when they understand the bigger picture or feel a part of the process
• Lack of transparency:  Consumers are more educated/more jaded than ever and when a plan like this gets communicated as being all about the environment it is, to many, offensive.  Is it an important and creative method to partner with customers to reduce costs for mutual benefit? Say that.  Let it be ok that it’s a smart business move which has measurable benefit to eco-efficiency goals if that’s the case.  The biggest benefit to the property, one might gather, is the reduced labor cost.   How that pencils with the reduced room rate would take some study, but it appears to be a successful program to reduce costs.  Why not let that be part of what is measured and reported?  Transparent reporting/communication would have helped to build trust and might even have made this article read differently
• Green. This article raises social responsibility issues which cannot be addressed through the green lens alone.  Businesses which successfully integrate a balanced approach to sustainability, with a measured eye on social and economic indicators as well as those of eco-efficiency, will sooner prosper with a healthy corporate culture in tact.

Many guests are comfortable with the idea of going without getting their sheets and towels changed everyday and might well appreciate a reduced rate as their part of the deal.  Initiatives like these are example of the sort of innovations which bring needed improvement to reducing our impacts on our natural resources.  It’s important that, in pursuit of such initiatives, organizations have clear plans based on triple bottom line considerations, including social elements of the business, and provide transparent reporting on the results of their decisions.  Call a spade a spade and avoid messes like these.