Despite the sector’s growing use of sustainability frameworks and carbon-tracking tools, many planners still omit major emission sources such as delegate travel from event footprints, leaving a significant gap between ambition and real impact reduction, according to event:decision’s new State of Sustainability in the Event Sector white paper.
The report, which offers a snapshot of how the sector is performing across environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions, warns that the sector risks “measuring what’s easy, not what matters.”
It reveals that whilst enthusiasm for sustainable event solutions remains strong, financial realism and logistical pragmatism are driving many decisions in the planning process.
Other key takeaways include:
- Social and governance considerations — including living-wage compliance, supply-chain transparency and legacy planning — continue to lag far behind the environmental agenda.
- Actioning these factors can now be measured, reported and benchmarked.
- Doing so adds significant value to the planning team or agency and can be considered a competitive advantage.
- Many decisions made in the standard planning process (destination & venue selection) are key sustainability considerations.
- Decisions made later in the process (menus, print, sourcing), whilst having smaller emissions impacts, are important for optics and brand-value.
- Practical benchmarks: more than 5,500 data points from event:decision Impact Reviews and the Power 30 Most Sustainable Agencies campaign have been analysed to provide comparative performance baselines for agencies, venues and in-house teams.
“As agency leaders and brand owners rethink live-events strategies, the number one barrier we’re seeing isn’t intent, it’s evidence,” said Matt Grey, at event:decision.
“The sector has reached a point where intentions meet accountability. If you can’t report the responsible performance across ESG of your event, and nowadays not just your carbon emissions but your social impact also, you can’t manage, improve and deliver value to your stakeholders. Sustainable decisions really should be factored into the brief from day one. Including ‘sustainability’ at the end makes zero sense and wastes your time and budget.”
The paper offers seven strategic lessons for trade professionals, including: integrating sustainability KPIs into RFPs, using venue certification as a decision lever, including delegate-travel emissions in your emissions baselines, benchmarking the social impact of your events and reporting decision-grade insights, not just ‘green’ tick-boxes.
In addition to data from event:decision’s flagship Track and Impact tools, the paper also incorporates external research from leading industry sources such as Amex GBT’s Meetings & Events Forecast, the BCD M&E Global Trends Survey 2026, and the Oxford Economics Global Risk Survey.