Designing Catalyst23 with sustainability at its heart
As CreateFuture continues to focus on its commitment to its BCorp certification and being a Business For Good we constantly remind ourselves that we can have a positive impact with everything we do - even for special events such as our annual Innovation and Design Leadership conference, Catalyst.
Conferences are always challenging as the variables of logistics and stakeholders are often unique and not always within the events direct control. This year our mission was even more focused on sustainability and we challenged each decision from day one with that in mind. Here are some of the ways we made sure we reduced our impact and encouraged all event suppliers and attendees to do the same.
Event venue centrally located with regular buses and trams. And with this, we encouraged everyone to take public transportation or walk where possible in all our delegate and speaker conference comms.
Checked that all suppliers didn’t use single use plastics and worked with the venue to ensure their sustainable commitments were aligned. This included swapping out a one-time use PVC pop up banner for a pop up banner made from 100% recycled paper fibre and using VOC inks allowing us to fully recycle the banner and all our signage materials when we were finished with them.
Reduced use of images on the conference website targeting reduction of CO2 consumption.
All on the day event information was made accessible via a QR code, reducing our overall demand on paper usage (such as agenda leaflets and menus) to zero.
Reducing conference ‘swag’ where not needed such as avoiding non-sustainable tote bags and paraphernalia and choosing useful items (notebook, pens) with maximised recycled materials.
All branding has been designed in a way to allow for year-on-year use. This included encouraging the return of event lanyards for reuse which was very well received by our delegates with an 80% return rate, enabling reuse for next year.
Where possible choosing to work with suppliers that have similar values such as our local caters, Social Bite* who provided brilliant sustenance for the day (over half the menu consisted of vegetarian and vegan options). We also worked hard to provide accurate catering numbers to reduce waste.
Overall it was a massive team effort with the rewards of a great conference, great delegate feedback and post-conference we discovered that our efforts to be more sustainable actually saved us on event costs which was an unexpected but encouraging upside! We learnt some valuable lessons and new techniques so will be ensuring we improve on them for Catalyst24.
*Social Bite, a charity and social business on a mission to end homelessness. By partnering with Social Bite we are helping to provide homes, jobs, food, and support to empower people to transform their own lives and break the cycle of homelessness.