Can events go green?

At 11.47 pm, the party is over. The last guests have left, the music has stopped and the ballroom that was buzzing with conversation only a few hours ago has suddenly become strangely quiet. Outside, cars are pulling away and taxis are disappearing into the night. Inside, another operation is beginning. The stage is being dismantled, flowers are being gathered, banners are being removed and tables are being cleared. Boxes of unused material are being packed away while half eaten food and hundreds of plastic bottles make their way towards the bins. An event that took weeks or sometimes months to create has lasted a few hours. Its environmental consequences can last considerably longer.

This is the uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of the modern events industry. Events are about creating moments that people remember, yet much of what is used to create those moments is designed to be temporary. The bigger the occasion, the greater the consumption can be. More lighting, larger sets, elaborate decorations, printed material, elaborate menus, transportation and temporary structures all come together to create an experience that is meant to disappear almost as quickly as it arrives. For years, this was simply accepted as the price of putting on a successful event. Today, however, there is a more difficult question to answer: what if the success of an event should also be measured by what it does not waste?

Sustainability has become one of the most discussed subjects in the events business but it is also one of the easiest to misunderstand. It is tempting to believe that an event becomes sustainable because it uses recycled paper, replaces plastic straws or places a few plants around the venue. These gestures may be useful but they are hardly transformative. True sustainability begins much earlier, at the moment the event is conceived. It is about the choice of venue, the distance guests have to travel, the materials used in production, the quantity of food ordered, the energy consumed and what happens to everything once the guests have gone home.

Food perhaps offers the clearest example of how an apparently generous gesture can become wasteful. Events are often planned around abundance because nobody wants a guest to walk away hungry. Buffets are designed to look plentiful and caterers naturally err on the side of having more rather than less. The result is that perfectly edible food can end up being discarded at the end of the evening. The global numbers make the issue difficult to dismiss. According to the United Nations Environment Programme's Food Waste Index Report 2024, the world wasted an estimated 1.05 billion tonnes of food in 2022. That represented almost one fifth of the food available to consumers. For an industry that routinely serves hundreds or thousands of people at a time, food waste is not an abstract environmental problem. It is something that happens at almost every large gathering.

There is no reason why sustainability should mean serving guests less interesting food or creating a less generous experience. In fact, it could encourage better hospitality. Menus can be built around seasonal ingredients and local produce rather than relying on an unnecessarily large selection. Quantities can be planned with greater precision using confirmed attendance figures and consumption patterns. Smaller portions can be replenished rather than putting enormous quantities on display from the beginning. Surplus food can be redirected through appropriate recovery systems wherever possible. The objective is not to make an event feel frugal. It is to replace excess with thoughtfulness.

The same principle applies to the visual language of events. The events industry has traditionally depended on temporary architecture and decoration. A backdrop may be designed for one launch. A stage may exist for two days. Decorative panels may be produced for a single evening. Large quantities of vinyl, foam board, fabric, timber and other materials can be manufactured, transported, installed and eventually discarded simply because they served their purpose for a very short period. It is a strange model when considered from the perspective of any other industry. Imagine buying a piece of furniture for one dinner and throwing it away the following morning. Yet something remarkably similar happens in event production all the time.

The opportunity is to start designing for a second life. A stage can be modular so that it can be adapted for different events. Decorative structures can be created as reusable systems rather than one off installations. Signage can be digital where it makes sense and physical material can be designed for reuse rather than disposal. Even flowers can be considered differently, with arrangements designed to be distributed or reused after the event rather than simply abandoned when the guests leave. Sustainability therefore becomes a creative challenge rather than a limitation. The question changes from how much can we create to how intelligently can we create it?

Then there is the issue that is often overlooked when conversations about green events become obsessed with plastic: travel. Bringing people together inevitably means moving people from one place to another and that movement can account for a significant part of an event's environmental impact. Research from the Vision for Sustainable Events Industry Green Survey found that travel accounted for more than 80 per cent of the typical outdoor festival's carbon footprint. Suddenly, the choice of venue becomes much more than a question of aesthetics, capacity or convenience. A spectacular location that requires thousands of individual car journeys may be considerably less sustainable than a less dramatic venue that is well connected by public transport.

This does not mean that every event needs to become a virtual meeting or that people should stop travelling altogether. Human beings gather because physical interaction still matters. A handshake, a conversation over dinner, a live performance or the atmosphere of a crowded room cannot always be replicated on a screen. The smarter approach is to examine how people travel and whether those journeys can be made more efficient. Shared transfers, public transport, car pooling and strategically located venues can all help. In some cases, a hybrid element can allow people who would otherwise need to travel long distances to participate without being physically present.

There is also a compelling business argument for taking sustainability seriously. Waste costs money. Unused materials cost money. Excess food costs money. Energy costs money. Transport costs money. Producing a large installation for a single evening and then finding somewhere to dispose of it is not simply an environmental problem. It can also be an inefficient use of a client's budget. Sustainability and commercial efficiency are therefore not necessarily opposing objectives. In many situations, the more carefully an event is planned, the less it needs to consume.

Perhaps the biggest change, however, has to take place in the way clients brief agencies. Sustainability cannot be something that is discussed after the creative concept has been approved and production is already underway. By then, most of the important decisions have already been made. It needs to sit alongside the event objective, audience, budget, venue and creative idea from the beginning. If a client says that an event must generate minimal waste, the agency should know what that means before the first design is presented. If travel is a major consideration, venue selection should reflect it. If materials need to be reused, the creative concept should be built around that principle rather than trying to retrofit it later.

Measurement will become equally important. The events industry is already comfortable measuring attendance, engagement, leads, sales and social media conversations. There is no reason why it cannot measure environmental performance with the same seriousness. How much waste was generated? How much was reused or recycled? How much food remained? How many materials were used more than once? How many guests used shared transportation? How much printing was avoided? What happened to the stage and the decorations after the event? These questions may not sound as glamorous as discussing the theme or entertainment but they could become the real indicators of progress.

There is a larger cultural shift behind all this. For decades, the events business has operated on the principle that bigger means better. Bigger stages suggest greater importance. More decoration suggests greater generosity. More food suggests better hospitality. More lights suggest greater spectacle. But perhaps the next generation of events will begin to challenge that assumption. A sophisticated event does not necessarily have to be excessive. In fact, restraint can sometimes be a more powerful expression of creativity. The most memorable experience may not be the one that consumes the most resources but the one in which every element has a clear purpose.

That is where sustainability could become genuinely exciting for the industry. When designers cannot simply produce something and throw it away, they have to think harder. When organisers have to consider how guests will travel, venue selection becomes more strategic. When caterers have to reduce waste, menu planning becomes more intelligent. When clients ask what happens to the event after it is over, production partners have to think beyond installation and dismantling. Environmental responsibility can therefore push the industry towards better design, better planning and ultimately better events.

Perhaps the sustainable event of the future will not look sustainable at all. There will be no need for a forest of green leaves on the invitation or a large message telling guests that the event is environmentally responsible. Instead, sustainability will be quietly embedded in the experience. The food will be thoughtfully sourced. The venue will be accessible. The set will have a life beyond the event. Materials will be reused. Energy will be consumed intelligently. Guests will still feel entertained, welcomed and impressed but the extravagance will come from the quality of the experience rather than the quantity of resources consumed.

And perhaps that is the real test. The events industry has spent decades mastering the art of making an entrance. Its next great challenge is to learn how to make an exit without leaving a mess behind. A successful event should create memories, conversations and connections. It should not need to create a mountain of waste to prove that it happened. If sustainability becomes part of the creative thinking rather than an afterthought, the green event may eventually stop being a special category altogether. It will simply become what every well designed event is expected to be.

 The author is the Founder & Director of creative hotshop K-Factor Communications Pvt. Ltd., India. To reach out to the author you can write to [email protected]