Organize a Sustainable Event
The sustainable event production guide helps you to organize public events in such a way that future event organizers are also left with an opportunity to organize events.
Sustainable development consists of three areas, which are ecological, social and economic sustainability. This guide focuses on ecological sustainability.
The terms sustainability and responsibility are often used interchangeably. Sustainability can also be considered as the end-goal that can be achieved through responsible actions.
Whether it is a festival, conference, sports competition or a community party, events always put burden on the environment. Participants travel to events by cars and planes, and events leave behind piles of litter and cause spikes in energy consumption.
A responsible event organizer recognises their own environmental load and aims to reduce it. At best, sustainable event organizing can also increase climate crisis awareness.
Oulu is the European Capital of Culture 2026. The goal is for events in the area to be as carbon-neutral as possible by then. In its environmental programme, the City of Oulu is committed to strive for carbon neutrality by 2035.
This guide has been compiled in The Most Sustainable European Capital of Culture project, which searched for tools for event organizers to help them in their environmental work, for example by testing innovations that reduce event emissions.
The Sustainable Event Production Guide
Other operators have published guides, carbon footprint calculators and responsibility programmes as well. This guide complements other works and provides practical guidance from choosing a venue to pursuing environmental certificates. A variety of links from research information to legislation have been compiled to support the three-step guidelines.
With the help of the sustainable event production guide, event organizers can reduce their environmental load step by step. There are guidelines ranging from minimum requirements for beginners to actions for advanced event organizers and leaps for top performers. You do not have to do everything at once, as environmental work at events is a process where you can only get better at or learn from its setbacks.
All innovation testings conducted in the project are also reported in this guide. They will not save the world, but they do serve as inspiration for the future. Collaboration between event organizers and innovators can open up new hopeful prospects and creative solutions for our planet’s future. What could be tested or done differently at your event?
Tested Innovations
View what solutions have already been tested at events.
Contact
Impressed, interested or came up with a suggestion for improvement?
We will help you in all areas of event production free of charge! Contact the City of Oulu Event Services (site in Finnish).
Content: Sanna Häyrynen, Janita Jämsén, Antti Takalo, Taina Ronkainen
Pictures: Sanna Krook, Eila Vähäkuopus, Pasi Rytinki, Kapina, Tapio Haapala, Dennis Konoi, Markus Översti
Sources:
- Creators of the guides for event responsibility or sustainability are event or city organizations like City of Manchester, Visit Berlin, City of Tampere, Pirfest, City of Helsinki, City of Lahti
- Websites of organizations promoting event sustainability: Julie’s Bicycle, Future Festival Tools, Innofest, A Greener Future (formerly A Greener Festival)
- Websites of festivals and venues showing exemplery responsibility: Ilosaarirock, Flow Festival, Shambala, Eurosonic, Tampere Hall
- Seminars, webinars, panel discussions, workshops and other discussions related to sustainability themes at events organized by event industry professionals, like MARS festival (Seinäjoki), Musiikki x Media (Tampere), Eurosonic (Groningen, Netherlands) and Tallinn Music Week (Tallinn, Estonia) between 2019–2023.
- Workshop series Kulttuurialan kestävyyskoulut I–III organized by the project, 2022–23 and A Greener Festival Assessor Training, 2021
You can find the organizations and their contents behind the other links.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals serve as a good starting point for planning sustainability measures in the event industry.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) compiles and assesses regularly global warming in the light of scientific publications.
Europe aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Many laws and regulations that affect event production are decided at EU directives’ level. Read about the European Green Deal.
The Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Finnish Environment Institute and the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) have compiled climate change information in the Climate guide.
The English Julie’s Bicycle is Europe’s leading organization combining cultural and environmental expertise and has grown from a collector of sustainability data in the event industry to an international operator influencing environmental politics and legislation.
The English A Greener Future educates, consults and awards certificates to event industry operators, venues and arenas, event subcontractors, artists and festivals who wish to be the pioneers of sustainable development.
Future Festival Tools provides events with teaching material for sustainability work.
The Dutch Innofest is the model of The Most Sustainable European Capital of Culture project, which has implemented sustainable innovations succesfully at events since 2016.
Read more about other guides related to event sustainability also, good examples:
City of Tampere Sustainable Events
Partners
The Most sustainable European Capital of Culture is the European Regional Development Fund’s ERDF project, funded by the Council of Oulu Region in 2019–2023.
