These days, no matter what kind of event you’re sorting out marquee hire for, it’s becoming increasingly important for you to factor in eco-friendly considerations… otherwise you run the risk of a spot of bad publicity, which no one wants in any way.
But the good news is that it’s not that hard to be green when it comes to event planning, as long as you prioritise it from the get-go when putting your shindig together. Big events, naturally, can create an awful lot of unnecessary waste but focusing on sustainability will mean you can easily reduce your carbon footprint and make a big difference in this regard.
Basically, all you need to do is ensure that whatever it is you’re planning is done in a socially and environmentally responsible way so as to waste as little water and energy as you can, as well as driving down the amount of general waste and your greenhouse gas emissions.
But it’s easy to pay lip service to the idea – how, exactly, do you go about doing this? Firstly, sit down and write a green policy so you can make any decisions in line with this and so everyone involved in putting the event together finds it easy to follow what you’ve got in mind.
You could, for example, decide to go completely paperless – which is incredibly easy these days since we’ve got the internet at our immediate disposal. A dedicated event website could prove useful so you can invite people online and they can RSVP without having to send anything by post. If you have to have something printed out, think about the kind of material you could use – instead of paper or plastic, go for something that’s easily compostable or something more sustainable like bamboo.
When it comes to the food for your event, you could hire a catering company like Elysia, a social enterprise that is committed to reducing food waste and giving people better access to more high quality artisan local food.
The company visits producers in London and out in the countryside to handpick products that would otherwise be thrown away, either because they don’t meet certain aesthetic standards or because of supply and demand imbalances. They buy these up at cut prices and then customers are able to choose from a selection of natural products at reasonable prices.
With any leftover food you have, you could then donate it to charities like Food Cycle or FareShare so that you don’t just bin it and let it all go to waste.
Other points to consider are travelling distances (try to choose a venue that’s close to transport links so people don’t have to go so far), serving local food and drink to reduce your carbon footprint, setting up carpools and shuttles so people can club together to get to your venue, and putting recycling bins here and there so people can easily dispose of waste in a greener way.
