🌱 The Future of Corporate Events: A New Sustainable Approach

🌱 The Future of Corporate Events: A New Sustainable Approach

As a small corporate events agency, we’ve always been intentional about how we do things. But when it comes to sustainability, the world of corporate events presents a real challenge. Events are essential for business – building relationships, sharing knowledge and driving growth – but they come at a cost: a significant strain on natural resources, infrastructure, and the environment.

Sustainable events management is all about putting the planet first by planning to eliminate harmful products or techniques as part of our corporate events and comms service. We believe that, with proper planning and consideration, we can continue to produce high-quality sustainable corporate events and internal comms that do not impact our precious world. Sustainable events management is about being prepared, planning for a better outcome and adopting a mindset that always challenges to do better is a win for everyone.

What’s wrong with Corporate events?

Our research found that the UK events industry emits approximately 1.2 billion kg of CO₂e each year, with 176 kg of CO₂e generated per delegate, per day at a typical conference. Add to that the staggering levels of food waste, single-use materials, and excess logistics, and it’s clear: the impact is substantial – and largely unmeasured.

How we approach events…

We aim to always create greener, more sustainable corporate events, and we consider the environment first. We strongly believe the quality of a corporate event doesn’t have to be a compromise in order for it to be sustainable. We are always thinking, “How can we do this better?”, as there is usually a more sustainable option available.

That’s why we created The Sustainable Events Playbook, which has been in development for many years. It draws on our experience of challenging how things are done and disrupting an otherwise harmful industry. However, we don’t only look at how we do things. As part of our sustainable events management, we encourage suppliers, clients, partners, freelancers and staff to adopt the same mindset to collectively contribute to a more sustainable world by planning sustainable corporate events that don’t harm the planet.

Measuring Sustainability

The corporate events industry has long needed disruption. Despite growing awareness of environmental issues, the traditional approach to event planning continues to be wasteful, carbon-intensive, and unsustainable

So when we looked at the broader events landscape, we saw a critical issue: while sustainability was often talked about, it wasn’t being measured. Clients were being encouraged to be sustainable, but there was no standardised, trusted, or data-driven tool to show what that actually meant – or whether it was making a difference.

That’s where SUSSED comes in.

SUSSED is Mocean’s proprietary sustainability measurement and reporting platform, designed specifically for the corporate events industry. It’s a direct response to a market that lacked credibility, transparency, and accountability. Before SUSSED, most sustainability efforts in events were based on best guesses or broad estimates. There was no real-time, verifiable data – just assumptions and good intentions.

We set out to change that.

Built on over a year of research and collaboration with data analysts, sustainability experts, and event professionals, SUSSED is grounded in real-world data and built for practical application. It integrates seamlessly into the event planning process and produces a robust, comprehensive 360° sustainability report this is also perfect for supporting your ESG scope reports. We break down the data into scope 1, 2 & 3, which provides perfect insight to support your ESG reporting.

So, what is ESG? And why does it matter so much?

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, and it’s all about how the city measures company operations. ESG has rapidly become a very important factor that businesses need to adhere to. ESG is superseding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and companies are now being judged n a new set of standards. The environmental criteria take into account what sustainable efforts companies are making. The social criteria look at what the relationships are like between organisations, suppliers, customers, as well as communities. Governance looks at the company’s leadership audits and shareholder rights. Even though ESG reporting is a legal requirement now, there are many reasons that businesses should care about their ESG offering. Socially conscious investors use ESG to screen potential investments, and more employees are choosing to work for employers with a strong ESG proposition. 

What’s important going forward?

When it comes to sustainability in the corporate events industry, there’s always more to be done and better ways to improve. We don’t stand for green-washing, and realistically, there’s no way to be completely 100% sustainable when producing a corporate event. However, there are lots of things to consider doing and many ways (big and small) you can limit the harm you inflict on the planet. 

As businesses, we each need to take our responsibility seriously to protect the environment as best we can. We understand, especially as a small agency, you can often think – “how will this really make a difference? I’m only one person.”, but even little efforts lead to big changes, and we really believe it’s the small actions that matter most.

So if you would like more help understanding how to be more sustainable or want help producing your next corporate event responsibly – get in touch and we will be more than happy to help. 

Mocean is a multi-award winning creative agency specialising in sustainable corporate events, brand activation and strategic storytelling.