HOW CAN WE INCORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY INTO LIVE EVENTS?

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Today, I have three amazing guests. I have Jill Drury. She's the CEO and founder of Drury Design. I have Dawn Martin. She's the vice president of creative and production for BI Worldwide. And I have Bel Hanson, who's the operational and program senior manager with the International Society for Computational Biology. Wow, that's a great title. Everyone, hello and welcome to the show. Hello. Hi, thanks for having us. Today, our show is dedicated to ESG, which stands for environmental, sustainable, and governmental. And I really wanted to share with you what I've been experiencing. In the last month, I've been on many shows where I've seen this to be a very important topic. And the topic was important in the sense that everywhere from putting in green carpet to having live plants to, you know, I think corporations, and not all of them, I think a subset of major corporations are thinking about this is important to their attendees. So I want to get your viewpoint from different perspectives and ask your thoughts. And I'm going to start with Jill. And Jill, has sustainability become a priority on events? Is that a priority? Because my personal experience has been some companies, yes, and some no. Hi, Les. Thanks for having me. So I think that sustainability has been important for a really long time. I know that Drury has been actively involved in it since we did our first video 35 years ago about sustainability, I think. Particularly in the 2010 through 2015, it was a box that clients wanted checked off on their must-have list or nice-to-have list. But I think it went by the wayside and other things became more important. But it has always been a priority for Drury, and it needs to be a priority for everybody at this point in time. Okay. All right, Bel, you put on shows in your association. Has sustainability become a priority for your team? Is it something that's important? Or as Jill said, some people put it by the wayside. Oh no, absolutely. It's increasing by the day for us. So as an association, we actually started a carbon offset program several years ago for every registration. It's open throughout the year, but specific to each event, a certain dollar amount from each registration goes toward carbon offset. We actually own a grove of trees in Scotland, and a tree is planted in that grove every time someone pledges to the program or registers for a conference. So that just increases. And then from there, we've created additional sustainability items. For the first time being back in person this July, we will have a green pledge that our members can sign. And it just basically means they're going to adhere to doing a list of very sustainable things, and access to that's on our website. We're also adding a green travel initiative. So there'll be an award this year for green travel coming to our meeting. It's a competition that people will be able to sign up for, where they'll be able to showcase in a short three to five minute presentation what things they're doing to make their travel and time at the event more sustainable. You know, I think a bicycle. If I take a bicycle, I only produce the carbon my body puts out, and basically the CO2. So the winner would be the person with the bicycle, the skateboard, or someone who just walked. Yeah, exactly. Or little things that you don't think about. Somewhere out there on the internet, there's a list that shows you what carbon offset is, or how much carbon offset the difference is between packing one less pair of shoes in your suitcase. And so it's the difference between checking a bag, and having a carry-on, and packing with less items, and having a capsule wardrobe, and all of those things. They're small, but they're mighty in the end. And so if we get more and more people to do this, it creates a large impact. You know, I never thought about only one pair of shoes. Right? Yes, but they better be the comfortable ones. Yeah. So Dawn, what are your thoughts on this? Are companies making sustainability a priority? Yeah, I think we're seeing more and more of it. And as Jill said, you know, we've been doing it for many, many years. We've got committees and all kinds of different things. But I think in the past maybe 15 years, I've seen clients have some interest, but not actually put their money or their actions where their mouth is. They're very interested, but when it comes down to actually doing something, they didn't necessarily do it. Right now, we're seeing more and more of them actually acting on it, especially in our global offices, Australia especially. We're working with carbon offset whatever usage you've got, and it becomes a certifiable event. So it's kind of cool to see that starting to happen. That's awesome. So about 10 years ago, I went to a major technology company, which I won't mention their name, but we all couldn't live without them. And I sat in their office with their creative production folks, and they said, we'd like to do a carbon neutral show. And I, of course, 10 years ago, responded, we'll have to plant a forest. And that was my natural reaction. Obviously, today, we're a little more sophisticated. So this question is to Jill. We think about a show and an audience. Do you think people are committed to ESG, or is it something that is more ingrained in a company culture? If there's some corporations where sustainability is one of their really core values, and other people are maybe, let's just say they put on a sustainability show for the people that are in the audience to make them feel that way. Where do you think we're at on this? Me, all of the above. I think that there are some companies who are truly invested as part of their culture, and that's what they walk the walk, and they communicate, and they do everything that they can to engage their stakeholders. There are other companies who do it because they're told to. And they say, get on the bandwagon, or you won't be working with us. I think that whatever the reason that somebody engages in sustainable practices at their events, I'm okay with that. Because eventually, it will become habit. And I think the hardest part is engaging everybody to participate in what's going on. So having a communication strategy of how you're going to engage your participants is really important. Education is really important. And it needs to become second nature. Just things like Bel just said, pack one pair of shoes, right? There are so many different things that you can do with venue and food and beverage. I mean, Les, I remember having a conversation with you several years ago about what do you have in place? Do you power down? Are you at half power at any point? How much HVAC do you need going to keep the equipment going? And we had those conversations earlier. So you need to engage all the stakeholders from your clients to the participants to your vendors. So it's got to be a team approach. Everyone's got to be on board. So hopefully by the time we end this podcast, you all will come up with just one good idea, whatever that is that we can take away. So Bel, do you agree with Jill on this? Do people walk the walk and talk the talk or is sustainability ingrained in the culture of your association? For us, it is definitely walk the walk, talk the talk. And I talk to a lot of other association planners and sometimes it's a hurdle to get past what their board wants or to get past what their members want. But I do feel like it's baby steps, but everyone is moving forward and everyone is slowly coming on board. I think the one piece of advice that I would give anyone or that I would suggest is just if you haven't started, start small. Start with something like eliminating printed programs or adding no single use water bottles. Start simple and then build from there for your events. But I do definitely feel like it's moving forward. More and more people are talking about it and walking the walk. We're definitely seeing an increase all around. Got it. Okay. Dawn, what have you found in this company culture ingrained versus just showing up do something that looks sustainable? Do you think for a company, it's their image they have to portray or do you feel like it's really something that is one of their, what I would say, high priorities for their meetings and events? Because I've seen it both ways. Right. And I think it does depend on the client and sometimes their industry as well. We have a lot of clients that are in paper goods and all kinds of things that need to be really do walk the walk and talk the talk. Other clients, not so much. They might be interested, but it's not something they actually do. But I think they're starting to come around and I think what we're seeing is that they're very interested when we offer ideas to them that maybe they hadn't thought about. That maybe something as simple as a solar lighting for a party at night. So all the up lights are solar and they don't have to be plugged into anything. And they're all like, oh, that's so cool. It's a baby step, but some of those clients that aren't really a hundred percent there are starting to enjoy that. So. So I love that idea. And that brings me to the next question I have is, are there some things that just come to your mind that are ideas that we can think about for sustainability in an event? Jill, maybe you could throw out an idea or two and say, this is what every event should think about doing. It's hard to narrow it down. I think also depends on what area you concentrate on. I mean, if we look at food, for instance, there are so many things that we can do in terms of local, organic, have a meatless meal, one meatless meal during your conference, even that would be helpful. And go for a quality instead of quantity. Take advantage of the Bill Emerson law. Make sure your food is donated afterwards. And if you have a, you know, check what the venue has in place. Do they have composting? Do they do back of house recycling? Do you need to have recycling out front? And then don't just make sure that just because they told you they're doing it, they may have everything in place, but not do it. So make sure that they do it. So that's one way. I think another way, you just mentioned bikes, you know, where is your event being held? Is it walkable from the hotel to where the event is at? Or bikeable? And, or do you have a no idling policy in place? And do you have, are you using electric vehicles if you do need vehicles? So you can go that way. You also mentioned less carpet. Yeah. Go for recycled carpet. It's more expensive, but go for a good quality and you can use it over and over again. Look at the width of the aisles that you have. Do you need carpet down the aisles? How about around the perimeter of the room? Sometimes you need it for sound, but sometimes you don't. And so look at what you're doing in terms of your build in and build out. And, you know, I said pack in, pack out, same as when you go camping, pack in, pack out, nothing left behind in your expo. If you brought it in, take it with you. But, you know, it's look at your lighting, what kind of lighting instruments are you using? Earlier, we talked about, you know, powering down and you do that and you have your HVAC at half when you're rehearsing and setting up. So there are just so many different areas that you can look at for sustainability and incorporating health and wellness as well. I just want you to know if we get to walk between venues from the hotel to the ballroom, that's some health and wellness right there. But how many times have you gone out of into a ballroom and it was sub-Arctic, the temperature in the ballroom, because they're waiting for thousands of people to show up and you're going, it is so cold. And that's why the crew backstage are all wearing winter parkas at the show. And you're going, why are they doing this? So it's electric blankets. Well, we need solar blankets. We can't do electric blankets for burning carbon. Can you give us three or four ideas to add on to what Jill had given us probably 20 ideas just now. Overachiever. No, they're great. So document, I know that sounds like a lot that we use for kind of our internal metrics when we're looking at locations. Some of it, we write right up front in our RFPs when we're, you know, putting a request for proposal out to locations, you know, looking for lead certification, looking for the lack, you know, getting rid of single use bottles and things like that. But it kind of helps us as we're looking at venues, accommodations, food and beverage, all of those things and where they're moving forward. I will say one big thing is single use plastics. I've had the fortune, I guess, of the over the last month getting to tour quite a few hotels in three or four countries. And every single one of them mentioned, or one of us, one of the planners in the room brought up the use of single use plastics. And many of them are looking to eliminate by 2030, eliminate by 2040, you know, doing a carbon offset in addition to what they're doing with their water usage. And so we're seeing that with hotels, we're starting to see it with venues. It's becoming more standard in the practice of us as planners, us as association members, putting that in our RFP. So it's right up front and I'm seeing more and more of that. I would say at least 20 to 25% of planners have it currently in their RFPs or moving toward that. So that's a big one is holding the venue and holding the accommodations accountable for what you're asking for. And secondly is when you plan things like walking between spaces, not hiring transportation, letting your members know why you're doing it. And one, it saves money and two, it's good for the environment. Looking to have things in locations that the city itself or the location itself has a bike program, has a hotel that allows you to borrow their electric cars. Yes, I did just see that in Germany this week where a hotel has- You borrow an electric car? Yeah, the hotel has three electric cars that you can borrow while you're there on site. So what do you do for water if you're not gonna have a bottle of water? What do you use that's not a single use plastic? Just curious. Yeah, so two things. One, we encourage people to bring a water bottle, but two, they have an opportunity to purchase a multi-use bottle during registration. The offset for that money actually goes toward travel fellowships for students. So it's a two-fold process for us. One, they're doing well by the environment. They have a single use bottle. They can fill it with coffee in the morning because it's kind of a travel mug, wash it out, fill it with water the rest of the day. So it's a multi-use kind of system. That's been really helpful for us. Yeah, I know. I feel like this is kind of one of those, there's so many things. I just want you to know, you have mentioned, I was gonna say, between the two of you, I've gotten so many ideas. I would never have thought there's this many things to think about. Dawn, maybe you could throw something else into the mix here, another idea. I kind of think a little bit about AV. I was gonna get a solar truck and I was gonna power all the AV from the solar panels. Yeah, I keep checking things off my list. Okay, she said that, she said that. Couple of just little add-ons. You know, Jill mentioned giving away food afterwards. What we do is also, we do a lot of immersive environments. So giving away the props or maybe there's a full kitchen if it's a food service customer, rather than just sending it back or throwing it in a garbage pail, we do donate all of that. So it's pretty cool. It can be anything from, like I said, an oven to a table or a chair or a lamp or something like that. We do sell carbon offsets. I think, Bill, you might've mentioned this earlier, but we have for 20 years, carbon offsets for flights. A lot of customers buy them, a lot of them don't. We also have a repository for set pieces that can be reused. So we have a whole catalog in our internal systems that lets us go in and see what we have in which warehouses around the country that can be reused quickly, not have a lot of time to restore them, not a lot of shipping to get them there. So anything that we can do along those lines is great. And of course, everybody's using LED to be a little more efficient. Well, I was gonna say, you don't have to build a set. We're just gonna put up a big LED wall, like you said, and then we're gonna digitally do the set. So we're not gonna cut any trees down. No tree cutting, no assembly on site. We're gonna fly the LED wall or ground support it. So my question, back to Jill, is of all these things that people can do, is everything quantifiable? Can you measure every single one of the things that you all mentioned? I mean, is it possible to measure? I mean, it's carbon offset seems to be the easiest one to measure, but I'm not sure how you measure a pair of shoes. Like I only brought one pair versus two pair. How do you measure that? What's the expression? What can be measured can be managed? That's right. If we can't measure it, you can't manage it. I like to think the positive way. I think that it's actually the measurement and getting the data is probably one of the largest hurdles for overcoming because not everyone knows how to do it. Not everyone is trained on how to do it. And so you can put things into place. And if you can't report back on it and learn from what you've done from the metrics, then you don't, then it's not helpful in terms of understanding you're having a benchmark and knowing how to improve. But pretty much everything can be measured or estimated. And there are carbon offset measurements, calculators for different things, whether it's like hotels or water and energy and that are all available online. They're all, most of them are free. The UN has their own. And so, yeah, you can measure it. And it's really important because that data gives you the information you need to understand what you're putting out into the environment and into the world and how to improve on it. Got it. Now, my question to you is, what's the greatest opportunity in the events business moving forward? For all people in the events business, where is the sustainable opportunity that you see? That is such an open question. I'm giving you an opportunity to answer it anyway. See fit. I think the sky's the limit. I think that is one thing, we're continuing to move forward. I think that as you continue to implement these things, eliminating single use plastics, then increase your amount of vegetarian meals versus using meat, sustaining local. I think every single year, every single meeting, you have that opportunity to continue to raise the bar. But I think the most important thing is ensuring that what you're putting out there, what you're asking for is again, easy to understand. And then ensuring that your members, your attendees are aware of it and they're aware of the why so that they want to continue to support it. And so that you can continue to move forward and increase the needle on that. Got it. So this question is to Dawn. Dawn, we did lots of virtual events in the last two years. Do you think people felt very ESG about these virtual events and that now we're going back to physical events, they can't take the same level of credit for those virtual events where people didn't fly and they all were at home or operated remotely. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it plays in. We have some clients that really appreciated the offset so much that they don't want to go back to live. There's not a lot of them. Most of them want to go back to live. That face-to-face networking just can't be done in a virtual event. But I think that while they care about it, it's not going to slow down the live events coming back. Got it. It's just crazy right now. For sure. All right, this question is to Jill. Jill, with this ESG subject, will we be talking about this years from now or is this something that's short-lived? Does this have legs and will be around in 10 or 20 years or is this a fad? Well, unfortunately, I think it will have to be around for a very long time because we have to get the situation under control. Even ESG, it's controversial because there are questions about do companies who are participating in ESG have to be addressing all three areas, right? And so what if you have a company that's great to its employees, but it's a supplier for fossil fuels? What if you have a company that is energy-wise really on target, but it doesn't treat its employees well? So that's just one issue. So I think it's important that we all look at it. And for those of us who currently see it as something that's important, keep it in the conversation. Engage your clients, engage your vendors, engage your employees and have the conversations and don't make someone feel bad, but encourage them and help educate to bring people along. Got it. So I'm gonna bring my water bottle, my cantina-like reusable one and I'm gonna keep it in the car. So whenever I go to show site, it's pragmatic. You know what it is? Some of these things people just don't think about, you know, this is stuff that you have to ask the right questions and get the right answers to kind of see where we're going. Well, I have one last question for all of you and this is much wider topic than the whole ESG topic. I always ask this trying to the end of these podcasts, what are you most excited about getting back to live events? This is to Bel to start with. Could you tell me something you're excited about being able to be with people and gather and maybe experience some of the sustainability firsthand? Yeah, well, for me, it's twofold. As a planner, I also attend events, right? To continue with my education and to meet with various vendors. So for me, absolutely. It's about getting back in person to collaborate and to feel inspired again. I think the same holds true for our attendees. We will never give up the virtual component for our meetings because that's an equity issue for us because being an international society, we want to ensure that we allow for members to join and that with the virtual component is necessary, but it's ensuring that the in-person audience can connect with the virtual audience, but that in-person for them, it's about the collaboration, the connections. A meeting between two scientists at one of our events could lead to a vaccine or a cure for a particular kind of cancer 15 years down the road. So that's what I'm most excited about is just getting back to those organic moments of collaboration that occur, that they can't be planned, they can't be scheduled, they just happen naturally. And so it's a pebble that creates a ripple around the world that you don't know what's going to happen from it. That was amazing, that pebble. I'm inspired. You inspired me. That is awesome. Dawn, your thoughts. What are you most excited about getting back to live? And by the way, Bel said, virtual's here to stay. I just want you to go on the record. It's not going anywhere. She might be hybrid, but she said she won't pack her virtual bag away. Dawn, what are you most excited about? Yeah, we've been doing live events for over a year now. So I think the thing that everyone enjoyed the most was watching the audience's reaction and having them get so excited and so in tune with the direction the company's going and enjoying what's happening. That is just so motivating and energizing. But along with the lines of this podcast today, one thing that we're happy to get back to is that corporate social responsibility element that you really can't do as well when you're remote, but getting everyone together to do something for the environment or do something for the community, whether it's building a bunk bed or stuffing a backpack or building solar panels. I think that really helps corporations gel in terms of what's important to them in their ethics. So. I love that social responsibility of the attendees in a corporation, because if they build that culture, then it far expands above that one action. It's really how they expect their, we'll call it their members and their employees to act. And you lead by example. So Jill, will you bring us home? Will you tell us what you're most excited about being back to live and in your world? I think that Bill and Dawn have pretty much hit on the most important factors. I think coming together and the collaboration that happens, the serendipity of being face-to-face is always exciting to see what comes out of it and the surprise and delights of people coming together and learning new things. I think also that the time that we were all virtual, only virtual, 100% virtual because of COVID, things have changed coming back and the role of giving back of CSR community service of including health and wellness, more important than ever for our clients and for the stakeholders for our events. I think that they really appreciate it and value it and then take it out into the world with them. So that's why do we do it? It's fun to be in person and get to know new people and new things. I love the answer, new people, new things. I just want to thank all three of you, Bel, Jill and Dawn. What great wisdom that do you share today with the audience? And I've learned a few things about ESG and sustainability that I can implement in my crews backstage, front of house. And I just appreciate you all joining today and what great ideas for everyone. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Thank you all, great job.