“The only way we are going to protect the future of our planet is to work together.”

Lisa Sweeting created Green Sense Events in 2020 after 15 years in the event and hospitality sector to bring together her two passions - events and sustainability.

When I first started my business, I was keen to look at sustainable initiatives that organisers and I could incorporate into events. I was keen to see what I could learn and how I could help organisers. What I’ve since learned is that to fully embed sustainability into not only events, but also into the hearts and minds of the people surrounding that event, we need to start with the team.

We’ve all been in the situation where you’re given a task, not part of your job but an additional ‘project’, where you inwardly groan. You don’t see the benefit to you and you’re not getting any extra pay but it’s landed on your plate and you’ve got no choice but to do it.

Unfortunately, that is often how sustainability is seen. An added extra, a nice to have if there’s time, something that someone else is telling you to do.

So how do we change that mindset? Think of a time when you’ve had an idea, something innovative, something you feel passionate about and you’ve raised it with your manager and they’ve loved it. Not only that, it’s become your responsibility to develop and bring a team on your journey. It’s a chance to collaborate with other colleagues, to discuss ideas, to be a leader for change. How does that make you feel – inspired, positive, excited?

This is what sustainability should be about. It should be something you feel in control of, feel passionate about, it should be collaborative, and it should also reflect the company’s values and your values.

What are your values? It can be difficult to think about your values, but this piece from business coach Scott Jeffrey might help: “They highlight what we stand for. When we honour our personal core values consistently, we experience fulfilment. When we don’t, we are incongruent and are more likely to escape into bad habits and regress into childish behaviour.”

Have you ever been asked to do something that made you feel uneasy, something you didn’t agree with or understand? In Mike Berners‐Lee’s book There Is No Planet B he talks about intrinsic values, such as self‐acceptance, awareness, connection to others and care for the world. When people and societies are governed by their intrinsic values and motivations, they end up being happier, healthier and treating the planet more kindly.

When I sit down with clients to consider a sustainability strategy, one of the first things we do is to think about the purpose of the business. We then think about what the values are of the business and the people within it and keep this in mind when we consider any issues in the business and their events so that we can prioritise those issues and set targets based on what is important to the individual and the team.

When you want to create a strategy, it’s a good idea to bring in ‘Sustainability Champions’ or a ‘Green Team’ to help both create and embed the strategy into the organisation. Unilever is a multinational consumer goods company and a great example of this. They first set their sustainability targets in 2010 and have become an organisation that people want to work for.

Unilever has sustainability ‘ambassadors’ throughout the organisation. As a result, 76 per cent of Unilever’s 170,000 employees feel their role at work enables them to contribute to delivering to the sustainability agenda. By bringing in people from across the team with a variety of roles and responsibilities, including senior management, you are much more likely to create something that matters to the whole team rather than just one person.

Many venues and event companies are working towards ISO20121 certification.  It was written by and for the event industry and the way it works is to address what sustainability means to you and your stakeholders. It’s about a way of working that you then apply to an event rather than starting with an event itself.

The initial stage is about identifying what the purpose of the business is first, why does it exist? Then it’s about looking at its values and what’s important to the organisation before you move onto identifying issues. If the team can discuss and determine what is the purpose of the business and what they feel passionate about and then help set the targets collectively, they are much more likely to want to achieve them.

It’s also a good way of focusing on key areas rather than feeling like you must do everything. ISO20121 and sustainability in general shouldn’t be a check box exercise, it should be a continual process, where we learn from our mistakes, and we learn how to do things better.

I don’t claim to be an expert, as there’s always something to learn. With new innovations and ideas coming through all the time and better ways of doing things, we are constantly evolving, and this is how sustainability should be viewed. What I do know is that sustainability is collaborative and the only way we are going to protect the future of our planet is to work together.