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sustainability in 2023

First Published on Event Marketer, December 15, 2022 by Juanita Chavarro Arias:

Sustainability continues to be top of mind among today’s event marketers, as attendees and consumers, particularly millennials and Gen Z, increasingly keep tabs on how brands are showing up and acting eco-consciously. From menus to venues, planning an event encompasses myriad choices that can affect its overall footprint, so what should event professionals consider to design more responsible and sustainable events?

In this episode of Event Peeps, our guest Marley Finnegan, founder of sustainability-focused event firms Purpose Sustainability Strategy and Purpose Net Zero, sheds light on events’ environmental impact and strategies that can mitigate emissions and reduce waste. A certified sustainability professional, Marley comes from a background in events and now consults with corporate events teams and vendors on how to best tackle sustainability. Her Purpose Net Zero tool helps event hosts measure, monitor and manage attendee travel emissions data.

Marley points to circularity as a key area in looking at designing more responsible and sustainable events, and throughout the episode, she defines relevant sustainability buzzwords, outlines the three scopes of emissions, speaks on eco-conscious culinary, digs into travel footprints, and offers insight into what the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rule means for events. Lastly, Marley shares trends and considerations event professionals should note for 2023 and the coming years.

“I think that sustainability has gotten a bad rap… where it’s like sustainability is not cool or trendy or beautiful or it has to be sort of granola or not aesthetically pleasing, which I vehemently disagree with. I think that it’s about innovation, it’s about thinking, it’s about doing things differently, and it’s about people,” she says. “I just think there’s a lot of opportunity to really think creatively around how to engage people in new and different ways that we really haven’t been utilizing so far.”

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the race to net zero

It’s that time of year: McKinsey’s annual report on the most trending topics of 2022, revealed November’s topic of choice as net zero.

Also in November, COP27 in Egypt revisited the essential elements necessary to climate progress - and expounded on other areas of focus which prevailing in urgency - biodiversity, food choices, food waste, circularity + aviation, to name a few.

In 2023, Deloitte predicts 99% of publicly traded companies will begin to shift from commitments to action. 89% of execs surveyed say they enhanced internal goal setting and accountability around ESG, and 81% report creating new roles and responsibilities to prepare for governance + disclosure.

Technology is a major focus when it comes to preparedness, with 99% saying they are somewhat likely or very likely to invest in more technology and tools in the next 12 months - tools like Purpose Net Zero.

Beyond the potential regulatory requirements of required emissions reporting, a large contingency of executives anticipate business benefits to integrating sustainability into business strategy - which has been proven by Harvard, NYU Stern School of Business and is the consistent talk of investment experts.

For those companies who are unable to make large investments in ESG software, Purpose Net Zero can integrate with any event registration software and facilitate measurement and management of the largest contingency of event-related emissions, those around event travel. The future is net zero.