By Nathan Spencer, Director at UKREiiF

It’s a question we get asked now and again from those who’re interested in improving their own sustainability credentials, especially to showcase action rather than just ticking boxes on forms and giving lip service to the sustainability agenda.

“How did you achieve your sustainable events management accreditation?”

For reference we achieved ISO 20121 Sustainable Events Management Accreditation for UKREiiF 2022 and then an in-person audit during UKREiiF 2023 saw us retain the accreditation with zero non conformities…a huge success to say the audit team were reviewing an event hosting over 7,500 individuals.

The short answer is through many hours of dedication…leaning on external expertise…an internal commitment to make UKREiiF as sustainable as possible….and much more.

But let me highlight a few specifics along our journey to give you an idea of exactly how we embedded sustainability into the company culture to ensure our internal and external partners did as much as they possibly could.

Early Stages – Financial and Company Commitment

It’s not easy to achieve ISO accreditation of any type, and therefore it’s not going to be a cheap thing to do – firstly there is the internal resource and hours spent putting the work in, and in addition we’ve had to work exclusively with external experts to help guide us through the more complex elements.

Getting It Right Internally

We created a versatile internal working group – bringing people of all seniority and disciplines within the business together, and this has really helped the business integrate from early on ensuring all voices and ideas are heard and brought forward. The key has been the support from every area of the business including the CEO – enabling us to be more dynamic and do what we need to move faster than some businesses are able to.

The working group has developed five key pillars the business is working on with targeted KPIs and Objectives behind each of them, and frequent catch-ups and behind positive movement and improvements across the business.

Evidence Based

One of the biggest changes internally has been ensuring evidence is secured and reported on – previously we knew we were doing the right things and moving in the right direction around sustainability – but we weren’t truly reporting and creating evidence to back this up. It initially had its sceptics, creating more reports within the business was potentially creating more paperwork, but actually it allowed our internal working group to highlight the key areas for improvement, and to really push forward changes that could make change.

Commitment to Big Changes

That evidenced based approach left us to difficult questions – do we make transformational and large-scale changes which really solidify our sustainability credentials…ones which mean larger investments are needed but with no real commercial upside.

But I’m not sure ISO 20121 Sustainable Events Management Accreditation would be achievable without us doing this – and the business was in a position where we’d made those commitments internally to the business and to our team to make sure we went ahead.

From utilising vegetable oil powered generators on site at UKREiiF 2023 to ensuring 0% of our office waste is sent to landfill – we made some really big commitments and we’ve successfully delivered them.

External Influence

A major part of our ISO Accreditation success has also been utilising the UKREiiF platform to improve our partners sustainability footprint and dedication to social value which is a key element of the audit.

We’ve inputted contractual requirements for our partners to ensure diversity and inclusion is high on their agenda, and to push for things like no single use plastics to be offered on exhibition stands. We’re selective too of our partners to ensure they fit our core principles – with the likes of Moda and Caddick even creating a unique carbon offset café to push people to cover their carbon footprint to the event. Our focus on sustainability is pushing other companies to bring forward ideas like this and to do it at UKREiiF.

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We obviously must thank all of our internal team, external partners and supporters for playing their part, and we’re looking forward to continuing our work and sharing more details in the future.

To find out more details of our ISO Accreditation and how we achieved this feel free to contact me on [email protected]

By Nathan Spencer, Director at UKREiiF