The Exhibition Think Tank (ETT) has started up a Sustainability Action Group designed to support the industry to move toward more sustainable events, ETT Club community and project manager Sandrine Pittaway (pictured), reports:
With 15 industry professionals and experts, the Group will meet on a regular basis, in person and online, for deep-dive discussions.
Following the work done by the Group throughout 2022 and the presentation of its research in a panel discussion in December last year ‘Sustainable Events, nine things you can do to make a difference’, its founders identified a problem that, with so much information available, it was not easy to navigate through the challenges of measuring and knowing where to start to become a more sustainable industry.
Pioneering and sharing lessons learned are important to the Group, which says it will work to create a concrete and easily usable outcome, to support every industry colleague and company in the journey toward more sustainable events.
The first meeting of the ETT Sustainability Action Group was hosted in a hybrid format at International Confex, ExCeL London, on 2 March and attended by Marloes van den Berg, Jaarbeurs; Garcia Newell, DSV Global Transport & Logistics; Dr. Debbie Stanford-Kristiansen, Exhibition World Bahrain; Guy Garside, Explori; Mark Eddy, Newtork Consultancy Group; Kerrie Kemp, Informa; Mike Seaman, Raccoon Events; Céline Laukemann, Aditus, Thorsten Hilber, Momentus Technologies; Ade Allenby; Anna Schulze Niehoff, Mesago; Andrea Eppert, Messe Duesseldorf; Pietro Bottazzi and Lorraine Brock, Momentus Technologies.
Some takeaways from the participants at that first session were:
“Slow down, take your time and be thorough. Don’t jump in into measures, take your time to set your goals. It is not a race.”
“Measure, Repeat, Reduce.”
“Stands should be like Lego. You build, you disassemble, and you build again.”
“We’re all talking about the same thing. How to get together with venues, logistics, organisers etc. be open and don’t think you’re working on each other’s toes.”
“Set boundaries: What do we want? What is our goal?”
It was agreed that the purpose of the Group in 2023 will be to build a library of best practice cases, as well as a ‘Who is who’ directory with several categories.
The Sustainability Action Group is designed to create a concrete outcome for the industry, with the result of its work presented on the 14 November 2023 at the ETT Innovation Lab, a live event dedicated to innovations that will be hosted in person in London. The next group meeting will be hosted online with the intention of meeting in person before the summer.
ETT Club is an initiative by MBB Consulting Group and UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry. To join the ETT Club, collaborate with other industry professionals and join a community of over 1,100 people, click on the following link: https://www.exhibitionthinktank.com/membership-options/
