Outdoor green recycling bins feature four separate containers for cans, paper, glass and plastic.
Venues and event planners discussing sustainability when booking events is becoming more common as venues continue to look at how they can best devote resources to green solutions for everything from water to waste. That’s just one of the findings of the 2016 Green Venue Report prepared by Greenview Advisors, a sustainability consulting firm.
“Sustainability is moving up in importance to almost everyone in the live event industry,” said Amanda Simons, Project Manager, Greenview Advisors. “Venues are devoting more and more resources to providing green solutions and the report is a way to gauge what’s really going on in the actual venues and share what we’ve learned.”
The annual report is based on a survey conducted in July. In total, 44 venues from around the world, all of which hold a green certification or accreditation, contributed. There are 142 questions on the survey; the conclusions highlight yearly progress and trends in going green.
Twenty-nine of the respondents are from the United States, including the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York; Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas; Washington State Convention Center, Seattle; Atlantic City (N.J.) Convention Center and Orange County Convention Center, Orlando.
Fifteen international venues took part from Melbourne (Australia) Convention and Exhibition Centre to Amsterdam (The Netherlands) RAI Exhibition Centre to Bangkok (Thailand) International Trade and Exhibition Centre and Bangalore (India) International Exhibition Centre.
Simons said that some of the questions were:
*How do you manage the back-of-house recycle program?
*What percentage of your food and beverage is procured locally?
*What certifications are you using?
*What waste streams are recycled?
*Can you provide event coordinators for green solutions without additional costs?
*Do you have a green team or green coordinator on site?
KEY FINDINGS
• Fifty-seven percent of centers have active and ongoing back-of-house manual waste sorting programs in place. An additional five percent of venues can offer the service when requested at no additional expense to event organizers. Only 20 percent of centers reported not being able to offer back-of-house sorting when requested.
• Eighty-five percent of responding venues procure food and beverage products with at least one sustainability-focused certification or accreditation. On average, 52 percent of spending on food and beverage items procured in 2015 was considered local (within 250 miles/440 km).
• The total number of centers with a dedicated sustainability coordinator or sustainability manager on staff nearly doubled this year.
• This year saw a growth in the percentage of centers with green teams. Eighty-four of responding centers have a green team, up 77 percent from last year. The average green team size is also up significantly from 11 to 18 staff members, with team composition representing almost all departments within the facility.
• Responding centers indicated that on average 34 percent of event organizers discussed sustainability when engaging with the venue. This growth reflects a positive trend of year over year growth; up from 27 percent in 2014. Additionally, 81 percent of responding centers reported that sales staff are versed in the venue’s sustainability practices and discuss these options during pre-event planning.
• Seventy-nine percent of responding venues can provide event planners a specific waste diversion report for their event, a slight increase from 72 percent last year. Sixty-one percent provide the event reports at no additional expense to the event planner, up from 57 percent who provided the service free of charge the previous year.
• Almost half of responding venues utilize onsite renewable energy technologies such as onsite solar panels or wind turbines.
• Water management at venues is improving. Twenty-one percent of the venues surveyed capture rainfall, up from six-percent last year.
• Planning the precise volume of food needed for attendees helps control costs and minimize waste, making food management a critical component of event catering.
• Eighty-one percent report using active food waste management techniques, such as tracking and monitoring of food production waste, overage and spoilage. Additionally, 93 percent of the venues' catering departments regularly compost kitchen food waste, helping to divert waste from the landfill.
• Tracking event impact is improving. Ninety-three percent of venues provided annual waste data, 84 percent provided annual energy data and 89 percent provided annual water consumption.
“Responding centers indicated that 34 percent of event organizers discuss sustainability when engaging with the venue, up from 20 percent when we first did this in 2012 and 27 percent in 2014,” said Simons. “That’s a really positive growth trend.”
“Green events happen in green venues,” Simons said. “If there is a point person at the venues, they can help the event organizers so they don’t have to go it alone.”
“I got involved with the Green Venue Report when I was the GM at the Atlantic City (N.J.) Convention Center for Spectra,” said Karen Totaro, GM, San Diego Convention Center. “On a venue basis, it is a great benchmarking exercise to know where our gaps are and where we needed to focus in the future.”
“Venues have ingrained so much of the practices into everyone’s job, especially in operations, which I think is a healthy way of ensuring the practices themselves remain sustainable,” Totaro said. “It's hard to have all initiatives land on one person’s plate. Just like all venue staff sell, and all venue staff have to be part of security awareness, it takes all staff to keep us sustainable.”
Totaro is a fan of the report and plans on using the findings to look for new ways to save on energy costs and recycling. She also strongly encourages other venues to learn from the findings. “I think all venues should participate even if they are at the very starting point of sustainable practices, as it will give them a roadmap of what they can do next to achieve best practices for running a venue that keeps sustainable initiatives at the forefront.”
“Bottom line, a venue team needs to be good stewards of their venues and sustainable practices can save on costs, and most importantly, do the right thing for our communities, the people we serve and the generations to come,” she said.
Totaro was impressed that the number of venues that participated nearly doubled this year. “The names on that list are some big hitters and the time and effort it took to collect the data was challenging, so it tells me there is a huge commitment in our industry to continue down this sustainable road well into the future, and that is good business and good for our earth and all those that inhabit it,” she said.
The survey was sponsored by Freeman, Max-R, United Service Companies, and V2.
Simons said that Greenview initiated the survey and report because “there was a lot of talk in sustainability circles that the event industry was the most wasteful community in the world but we couldn’t find data to back that up. So we set out to get that data.”
In Green Venue Report’s first year, only 16 venues joined the discussion. Simons was thrilled with the 44 venues that participated this year. “We hope to get that number up to 100 for the next survey,” she said.
Anyone who wants to participate in the next Green Venue Report is encouraged to contact Amanda Simons, Greenview Advisors. The entire Green Venue Report can be found here.
Interviewed for this story: Amanda Simons, (503) 298-4561; Karen Totaro, (619) 525-5000