While this is brilliant, if you have ever been to a Fashion Week, then you may have notices how incredibly wasteful and non-green the majority of them are. It seems that on whole the principle of sustainability need to be much better integrated into the organisation of the actual fashion shows.

To debate this question lets look to Asia and see how the Chinese approached sustainability with the Shanghai Fashion Week. For the 2011 Closing Show the organisers decided to take a bold step and work to make the event more sustainable. The attached sustainability report that we produced using the GRI Reporting guidelines shares their approach, their achievements and their learnings. It’s an interesting case study showing how organisers can implement sustainability into event even in areas where sustainable infrastructure, knowledge  and services are limited.

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.

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.

It seems ironic that a sector so focused on health in the communities has seemed to place so little focus on health of the planet in their meeting management. Leading economic and scientific gurus clearly state that health is clearly linked to climate change.  But then again that is fairly obvious no?

So when are we going to see change?

In the last month I have seen some very interesting signs from some large pharmaceutical companies and healthcare congresses. My question is who will be the first to start a strategic sustainability initiative (i´m not talking about just recycling a few bottles, or printing less). Will we have a Novo Nordisk, Roche or Novartis who will start a campaign that will have an effect like Walmarts sustainability index?

The large pharma companies organise thousands of meetings a year. By translating their CSR principles into sustainable event practices and policies they would significantly accelerate the change happening in the meetings industry around the world.

Perhaps this report by Deloite can share a few clues? Deloite make a fair claim that sustainability is a significant trend that is destined to impact each of the health care industry’s major sectors. It is an imperative that will only grow in importance. Greening concerns more than providing an environmentally safe work environment for employees and promoting responsible business practices among suppliers who contribute to value chains. It is a fundamentally different way to lead and operate an organization.

Come on healthcare – get on the train and sustain your meetings! Less see some action and less conversation please.

The sustainability section makes for some good reading: You can read it here:

deloite_2015_sustainability.pdf

click to download

It reports on how the ‘green’ movement has affected the hospitality industry, and what the lodging sector has done to incorporate sustainable elements into their business models

Its well written and gives a good introduction for someone who wants a wide intro level understanding of global trends. The sections on the developing world were well done, but the European section is a little light.

In terms of certification it mentions in detail the excellent GreenGlobe and Leed systems but it does not discuss the other major systems or standards. I guess this is for a latter report.

Its good to see that the major consultancies are now “helping the cause” and writing about the business case of “going green”.

In summary – its only 16pages and worth the read