How Internal Events Can Reflect Sustainability Goals

Blog
3 minute read 9 May 2023
A group of people on a staircase looking up with many posters behind them
At the beginning of the year the Broadsword team came together from across the world for a day to connect and share our successes and strategy. Being an events agency with prominent sustainability values reflects in everything we do, including planning our internal events. Here’s how we made the day carbon neutral. 

Sustainability is one of our core values and is something we champion at every touchpoint within events and in our team. From the outset of planning our agency day it was essential to connect our remote team without an impact on the planet.

On the day of the event, our senior leadership team shared content centred around our strategy for the year and the things we are implementing to strive further in 2023 such as our new sustainability targets and internal CSR working groups.

Something we have been particularly excited to implement this year is a carbon measuring tool to offer clients the option to offset the impact from their events with us. We even tested it ourselves, making our team event carbon neutral.

We offset the total 0.25 tonnes of CO2 equivalent produced from the event, through contributing this amount to a Gold Standard project building efficient cookstoves in Rwanda to benefit the community.

Of course, carbon reduction is the first step towards making events more sustainable, so we took measures to keep our footprint as small as possible, with only a 9.26 kgCO2e per attendee.

Feedback and data is key to successful events, especially when tracking carbon. 

Surveys went to our team before the event to ensure the right amount of food was ordered for who was attending, and specific dietary requirements, so waste would be minimal. 

We chose to host the event at an Everyman cinema as it had an in house kitchen and bar which meant there was no single use cutlery used. The event space also offered many vegan options, meaning we could implement a primarily plant based menu with almost 80% of the menu being meat-free.

Beforehand, we also encouraged all of the team to choose more sustainable transport options as the venue was located centrally with train and underground links. A survey following the event meant we could look at the transport chosen and found 90% of the team chose to take public transport.

Being a global team doesn’t mean that planes need to be taken to an event which on average produces 3.16 kilograms of CO2 per 1 kilogram of fuel consumed. Team members based outside of the UK joined virtually so that they could still interact with the content. 

Being an events agency, we specialise in creating bespoke experiences and internal events, so what better way to celebrate our own team than planning an event and implementing sustainable event practices ourselves. 

Your next event could be carbon neutral: contact us if you’d like to hear more about tracking your footprint and making your event eco-friendly with us.