The 2017 Green Venue Report shows increased awareness of sustainability and best green practices.
How environmentally friendly is your venue?
That’s a question that Greenview asked facilities across the globe — 66 venues in 14 countries to be exact.
Greenview recently published its 2017 Green Venue Report, which highlights best sustainable practices in the industry, and this year’s analysis saw 50-percent more venues participating than in 2016.
“This was created a few years ago. What happen was, we saw that convention centers around the world have started to take notice of green initiatives,” said Lindy Farrar, a senior analyst with Greenview.
The for-profit company administers sponsor-driven surveys for a number of hospitality organizations, monitoring “their corporate responsibility and sustainability platforms to drive profitability, streamline data management, keep up with trends and provide effective communications for their stakeholders by leveraging the power of data, common guidelines, best practices, and innovation,” states the organization’s website.
“What we try to do with the report is give insight and content and show data trends, and we encourage all venues to participate no matter where they are,” Farrar said.
This year’s report asked venues 120 questions and found a number of helpful sustainable insights being used, including the fact that venues are saving millions of dollars with sustainability upgrades such as LED lighting.
Additionally, waste generated by events is being directly charged to event organizers, according to the report.
“In an effort to curb waste generation, 52 percent of venues charge event organizers directly based on waste tonnage or by the number of waste container ‘pulls’ or ‘hauls’ generated by the show. Additionally, about a quarter of the venues provide economic incentives for event organizers to reduce waste sent to landfill,” stated the report.
The health and wellness of venue staff is increasing across the industry, with 62 percent of venues having a health and wellbeing policy in place that applies to all staff, including health and fitness facilities “with free personal trainers to help promote healthy living and exercise.”
Energy tracking for events at venues also is improving, according to the report.
All the venues that took the survey reported that they track energy on an ongoing basis, with 88 percent tracking energy monthly, up from 86 percent in 2016 — also an increase of 77 percent in 2015.
“Almost one-third of the venues can sub-meter energy usage specifically to the exhibit hall. However, only five percent of venues can sub-meter (i.e. measure exact usage) individual exhibit booths in the exhibit hall, continually low adoption rate since 2015. Sixty-four percent of venues can provide event organizers with an energy-usage report specifically to their event, which is a healthy increase since 2015 (53 percent in 2016 and 48 percent in 2015),” the report states.
Renewable energy is slowly becoming a trend — 23 percent have Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), “representing a total of approximately, 248 million kWh purchased,” states the report.
Europe is king of public transport accessibility to venues.
The European venues that participated in the survey were all accessible by train, light rail or subway/metro bus or within walking distance from the airport, states the report.
By comparison, 46 percent of U.S. venues were accessible by the same means, and 38 percent of venues in Canada were accessible by train, light rail or subway/metro,” the report states.
Buying local has become a huge trend across the world for venue operators with 89 percent of venues procuring food and beverage products with at least one sustainability-focused certification or accreditation — up 85 percent from 2016.
And, of course, you can’t be sustainable without taking water into consideration, and 45 percent of venues provide an event-specific water usage report to event organizers, which is up from 44 percent in 2016. “Only five percent of venues track event water usage on an ongoing basis,” the report states.
Other practices, such as reducing food waste, and obtaining a sustainability certificate also were highlighted in the Green Venue report.
“We’re seeing that not only do they have the certification, but they continue to apply,” Farrar said.
Venues also are hiring and maintaining green teams to keep their facilities on track with sustainability, she said.
“Everyone across the board is continuing to invest. It’s not just some venues in parts of the world. It’s real money… millions of dollars into sustainability upgrades, she said.
To view the report, click here.