Putting sustainability on the agenda

This case study is part of our How to deliver a sustainable event guidance.

The team at University of Birmingham Conferences and Events came to sustainability with no specialist background in the field. They learned as they went, and what they built is now one of the more rigorous approaches to sustainable conferencing in the UK university sector.

Their story is particularly relevant for events professionals who feel sustainability is someone else's specialism. It isn't. It is a skill that can be developed, and the frameworks that feel overwhelming at the outset are precisely the tools that make it manageable. 

Starting out: Green Impact and finding a structure 

The team began by engaging with the Green Impact programme, moving from bronze to platinum in their first year. More than an award, this gave them a structured way to think about sustainability across their operations, breaking what initially felt like an overwhelming agenda into specific, achievable actions. It helped dissolve the paralysis that comes with asking "where do I even start?" 

They then looked carefully at available accreditation schemes and selected Green Meetings as the one that best matched their context and ambitions. The accreditation process itself was valuable: it prompted new questions, revealed gaps, and gave them a shared language for conversations with clients, suppliers, and colleagues. 

Embedding sustainability into the standard offer 

Working with the university's food and drink team, the conference services team developed a green day delegate rate - a catering package built around lower-carbon, higher-welfare ingredients, with carbon-rated options prioritised and supplier relationships developed to support it. What began as an additional option is now standard. This reflects something the team came to embody: embedding sustainability into the default offering is more powerful than making it an opt-in extra. 

Procurement was also reviewed with a specific focus on local social value, aligning spend more closely with the university's wider sustainability goals. Managing multiple venues makes consistency a genuine challenge. The team are honest about this, but having explicit criteria has made supplier conversations more purposeful. 

Learning at scale: a landmark conference 

A turning point came when the team hosted a large international conference for an external client who placed sustainability at the core of their own values. The client's expectations pushed the team to work at a scale and level of rigour they had not previously attempted. 

The conference was too large for a wholly reusable serviceware approach to be practical. The team's response was to introduce dedicated compost streams for plant-based disposables and, crucially, to weigh waste at every stream throughout the event. This meant they could report meaningful data to the client, not just impressions. 

The experience illustrated something worth noting: a client with high sustainability ambitions can push a venue to develop capabilities it might not have developed independently. Sustainability ambition, in the right circumstances, is contagious. 

Carbon tracing: building an evidence base 

For much of their early work, the team's understanding of their carbon footprint was largely anecdotal. To change this, they selected five events as a sampling exercise: a deliberately mixed set, from large international conferences to small UK-based gatherings, and collected as much data as possible across travel, catering, energy, and waste. 

The findings were not surprising in their broad shape, but they were valuable. Three conclusions stood out: 

• Travel is the largest and hardest challenge. For events with international attendance, travel dominates the footprint in a way that dwarfs all other decisions combined. 

• Food and procurement decisions are powerful and within our control. While travel is the biggest impact, it is also the hardest to change quickly. Catering and procurement offer more immediate leverage. 

• Measurement is the foundation of meaningful progress. Without data, sustainability commitments remain aspirational. With even basic measurement, they become communicable and improvable. 

The team now offers carbon reporting as part of their event management packages, and as a paid service for external clients who want meaningful data rather than estimates. The next step is developing modelling that shows clients the carbon profile of different event design choices, what difference it makes to shift to a plant-based menu, or to enable hybrid attendance for international delegates. 

Empowering clients and delegates 

The team's philosophy with external clients is to guide and empower rather than insist or enforce. Clients who come to an external venue have their own priorities and their own sustainability maturity; meeting them where they are, and showing them what is possible, tends to bring them along more effectively than imposing requirements they are not ready for. 

Delegate communications have become a key tool. Information boards on-site and published guidance online help attendees understand what the venue is doing and how they can contribute. The team's blogs How to be a greener delegate and How we're making conferences greener are good examples of sustainability communications that inform without lecturing. 

Engagement with EAUC's Sustainable Events and Communications Communities of Practice has also been valuable, offering peer connection, reassurance, and practical knowledge-sharing with others navigating similar challenges. 

On criticism and credibility 

The team has encountered criticism that their sustainability work is tokenistic. They reject this robustly, and on the evidence it is hard to sustain. It is, however, a reminder that sustainability communications need to be specific and substantive: stating what you have done and what you have measured, not just what you are committed to. Accreditation, measurement, and publicly available data are the most effective responses to scepticism. 

What others can take from this 

• You don't need to start as an expert. A structured framework such as Green Impact, Green Meetings, or another accreditation process can provide the structure to get started and build confidence progressively. 

• Make sustainability the default, not the option. The green day delegate rate becoming standard, rather than an add-on, is the single change with the greatest day-to-day impact. 

• Measure something. Even a sample of five events, with imperfect data, is more useful than no data at all. It changes what you can say, and what you can improve. 

• Your most ambitious clients are your best teachers. Saying yes to a client who pushes you further than you have been before is an investment in your own capability.