Introduction to Sustainable Events
Tourism in the city region is worth £5.5 million; Manchester welcomes over 1 million international visitors a year, and this supports around 77,000 jobs. Conferences and business tourism generated £573 million for Manchester's economy during 2009 according to a tourism study published today. The figure represents the income to businesses in Greater Manchester from the 4.2m delegates that came to the city and the 56,900 business events they were attending.
The profile of sustainability within the event and conferencing industry has been steadily increasing over recent years; the development in 2007 of British Standard BS 8901 (future ISO 20112) in Sustainable Event Management has been stimulated by the London Olympics 2012 bid which has sustainability embedded from the start.
Business, hotels and organisations that host events, conferencing and exhibitions can move towards becoming more sustainable by working through the Environmental Business Pledge Award Scheme, looking to implement a sustainable event management system or simply by identifying resources to be used at an event and planning to reduce them
Sustainable Event Management is the process used to produce an event with concern for environmental, economic and social issues. There is a formal management system called BS 8901 which has been developed specifically for the event industry; however there are also many simple steps you can take to ensure your event has a lower impact on the environment.