SBT & Yellow Fish Think Tank

Senior Event Manager and C&IT A-Lister Rachel Douglass shares the importance of maintaining focus on sustainability in a new world of experiences.

Everyone is asking the same question: ‘When will things return to normal?’ But what is normal anyway?

Before the pandemic, the focus of the events industry (and, we hoped, the entire world) was moving towards creating a sustainable future for us and generations to come. For now, those efforts have given way to adjusting and navigating an unknown path of life after lockdown.

However, a positive has emerged, time to collectively refocus and take heed of the lessons from the past and how we drive change moving forward.

Time to refocus

We have seen first-hand from the lockdown measures how quickly we are able to adapt to a slower pace of living and there could be a long-lasting positive environmental change after this pandemic, but it’s how we move on after lockdown that will decide this.

At Yellow Fish, we have always understood the importance of sustainability and we plan to drive this even harder as we move forward and out of this pandemic. We have been using this newfound ‘downtime’ to really focus on what is important to us when delivering events and the standards we expect from our suppliers and partners around the world. We hope our industry colleagues are doing the same and that we can come together to insist these become industry standards.

Second nature

With that in mind, we hope questions that are currently asked during initial discussions with our hotel partners won’t need to be asked in the future because the answers will be second nature.

Questions like: are you partnering with local initiatives to ensure food waste does not end up in landfill? Are the food items locally sourced from a sustainable resource? How can we make sure the event is having a positive impact on the local community?

The list goes on, but the answers and explanations hold the key to a more sustainable future for our industry.

Responsibility to educate

As an agency operating in a high carbon footprint industry it is our responsibility to help educate our clients to ensure they make informed choices regarding the environmental impact their event could have. We work with them to reduce that footprint by using recyclable materials, providing reduced air travel plans, and providing hybrid or fully virtual alternative solutions. There will always be the need for live experiences and we will look at every element to ensure we minimise the carbon impact as much as possible. Simple changes can make a huge difference, from electric transfers for VIP’s, looking at destinations with access by train, recyclable staging, a vegan menu and introducing a CSR activity which benefits and connects the audience to the community.

Now is the time for our industry to step up and embrace this next chapter we find ourselves in. To be trailblazers in sustainable events and consultants to our clients to ensure our planet and our people can continue to breathe. This is a golden opportunity to come together and make a change for the better.