Networking at the “Women in Net Zero Mixer.” Net Zero Conference photos courtesy Ling Luo.

When Drew Shula, founder and CEO of the green building consultancy, the Verdical Group, convened the first version of the gathering that would become the Net Zero Conference 13 years ago, it wasn’t meant to be an annual event, Kimmy Ngo, Verdical’s marketing and events director, told Convene.

Shula — an environmentally minded architect who founded Verdical in 2012 to advise the construction industry on building practices that reduce carbon emissions — was just looking for a way to bring clients and experts together at a dinner to talk about how to make buildings more sustainable and the emerging net zero movement, “which wasn’t well-known at the time,” Ngo said. (The United Nations has defined net zero as “cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions reabsorbed from the atmosphere by oceans and forests.”)

To the surprise of Verdical’s then-miniscule event team — Shula and one other person — more than 100 people registered, Ngo said. It demonstrated that there was an audience eager to learn about mitigating the negative environmental impact of building construction and operations and that events “are an amazing platform for bringing people together to share their knowledge of how to make the building industry more sustainable,” she added.

Bigger Reach

From there, Verdical Group assembled a “proper events team,” Ngo said, and began to develop the annual event now known as the Net Zero Conference, which in September 2025 brought more than 900 event participants from 27 U.S. states and 10 countries to the Los Angeles Convention Center for three days. The educational scope of the event has expanded along with its size: Last year’s keynote speakers ranged from the environmental activist Nalleli Cobo, who, while still a teenager, led a grassroots movement that shut down a toxic oil-drilling site in her South Los Angeles neighborhood, to Joel Cesare, an executive at Cambio, an AI-powered real estate investment platform dedicated to decarbonizing commercial real estate. Other sessions focused on construction, energy, materials, water, waste, and technology, as well as biomimicry (using nature as inspiration for problem solving), and a City of Los Angeles partnership with UCLA to create the LA City Biodiversity Index.

To avoid potential bias on the part of Verdical, an outside board of experts drawn from multiple fields is asked to score speaker submissions and determine the educational content, Ngo said. Verdical is a certified B Corp organization, which means it measures the social as well as the environmental footprint of its business and has strong diversity goals for its entire program, she said. The conference aims to create a speaker lineup made up of at least 50 percent people of color and 50 percent women — this year, 55 percent of presenters were women. A “Women in Net Zero” mixer was held in the conference’s Expo Hall, not exclusive to women but meant to celebrate them working in what traditionally has been a male-dominated industry, Ngo said.

And the Net Zero Conference also offered participants a way to get out from under the fluorescent lights of meeting rooms and into nature, Ngo said. “Especially with our conference being so focused on the environment, we want people to actually be out in the environment that we’re working so hard to protect.”(See “Not Just for the Birds,” below.)

Getting to Near-Zero

As would be expected at an event focused on net zero, “we take a lot of actions to have as minimal waste at our event as possible,” Ngo said. That long list includes foregoing plastic badge holders, printing badges on recyclable paper and reusing lanyards, asking attendees to bring their own water bottles, encouraging the use of public transportation, using real dishware and utensils whenever possible, and providing guidelines to exhibitors on how they can generate as little waste as possible. Verdical sets an example at its own booth, where visitors are given pencils made from wood harvested from sustainably managed forests and embedded with seeds, so that they can be planted when they are down to a nub, Ngo said.

Since 2020, Verdical has published a Net Zero Conference Transparency Report to record how it is meeting its internal goals, which includes generating “near-zero” waste. The Los Angeles Convention Center already has a clear waste-sorting system for participants to sort waste on site. Verdical also works in partnership with local Waste Not Consulting (WNC), which measures the event’s waste stream over the course of a day and calculates initial waste-diversion rates in a dozen categories, including wood, paper, glass, plastic, organic material, and single-use disposables. WNC then makes sure that anything that can be donated or is recyclable or compostable “ends up in the right place” and calculates a final diversion rate, she said. In 2025, the initial diversion rate was 49 percent and the final diversion rate was 91 percent. “We’re very proud of that score,” Ngo said. “We’re always looking for ways to make our event as low waste as possible.”

In recent years, Verdical’s event planning team has offered sustainable planning services for external events, Ngo said, including the Green Sports Alliance Summit, a global gathering dedicated to advancing sustainability in sports, and the 1% for the Planet Global Summit — the nonprofit organization’s 11,500-plus members are businesses that give 1 percent of their annual sales revenue to environmental organizations (Verdical is a member).

Not all of Verdical’s external clients are environmental organizations, Ngo said. It’s important to share their expertise in planning low-waste events widely, “because events typically are very wasteful,” she said. “We love being able to share [sustainable actions] with clients who may not have known of these initiatives to begin with.”

Not Just for the Birds

Some participants at the Net Zero Conference in Los Angeles last September took a break from walking the exhibition floor to hike a 1.3-mile loop at the Ballona Freshwater Marsh, part of a 600-acre ecological reserve in West L.A. The reserve, previously the site of invasive weeds, oil fields, and a concrete channel, is now a birdwatching hotspot, a refuge for more than 250 species of birds, some of which now return every year to nest after a 70-year absence, according to the Friends of Ballona Wetlands website, a nonprofit organization that led the rehabilitation of the wetlands.

The hikers saw a pair of white-tailed kites hunting, “and lots of snowy egrets, great egrets, and great blue herons,” said Olivia Jenkins, the manager of scientific programs for the Friends of Ballona Wetlands, who guided the hike. They also heard the calls of rarer species that are vulnerable to climate change, including least bitterns, Virginia rails, and marsh wrens, birds that often hide in the dense reeds of marshes, Jenkins told Convene.

Founded in 1978, the Friends of Ballona Wetlands’ decades-long work to restore and rehabilitate the reserve benefits far more than the birds it shelters. “A healthy wetland doesn’t just benefit wildlife, it also improves life for people,” Jenkins said, “by reducing flooding, cleaning and processing runoff and groundwater from surrounding communities, and creating green space in the city where folks can de-stress in nature.”

Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor.

Download the Verdical Group’s “2025 Net Zero Conference Transparency Report” (NZ25) here.

The post The Net Zero Conference Walks the Talk appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

Conferli’s subvention study sought to understand how subvention practices can fuel sustainability strategies, amplify impact initiatives, and create stronger, more equitable partnerships between destinations and associations.

Subvention programs have long been used to attract conferences to host destinations and benefit local communities. Public or government funding is the dominant source for these programs in Europe and Asia, which help to cover the costs of hosting events; in North America, CVB-funded programs are more common. Subvention programs have historically been intended primarily for economic benefit and a number of factors blunt their full potential for impact beyond that, according to a recent subvention market study.

The study — subtitled “Subvention as a catalyst for sustainable and impactful transformation in the Business Events Industry” — was led by conference-matchmaking platform Conferli in consultation with GDS-Earth, the Global Destination Sustainability Movement, and Meet4Impact, a Montréal, Canada–based nonprofit that works to help destinations and event organizers maximize the social, cultural, and environmental impact of their events.

The study explores the current landscape of subvention programs for meetings and events, based on data obtained through surveys, in-depth interviews, and live workshops conducted with 55 associations and 115 destinations around the world. It shines a light on the limitations of current approaches to subvention as well as how associations and destinations could change how they collaborate to go beyond economic impact and leave a legacy in host destinations.

One key finding is that while 91 percent of destinations surveyed believe that subvention can be a driver for positive change, only 6 percent have embedded change-driven criteria into their subvention programs. Bregje Frens, cofounder and chief commercial officer at Conferli and one of the report’s co-authors, provided additional context for this seeming mismatch between intentions and execution to Convene over email. “Several operational realities stand in the way,” she wrote. “Public-funding frameworks are still designed to justify economic return, not social or environmental outcomes. Subvention is often tied to tourism budgets, and changing those KPIs requires political will and proof that ‘impact’ is measurable. Then there’s fragmentation: multiple stakeholders (CVBs, tourism boards, ministries) share ownership, making it hard to assign accountability. Add in administrative complexity and limited data tools, and progress stalls, even when the intent is there.”

Another big takeaway is that while utilization of subvention programs is consistently high — nearly four out of five destinations surveyed have programs, and just over half of associations say they depend on these programs — there is oftentimes limited financial support after an association has booked with a destination. Geneviève LeClerc, CEO and cofounder at Meet4Impact as well as one of the report’s co-authors, shared her perspective on how the best of intentions fail to materialize into change initiatives for individual destinations. “There is subvention funding available to the events or the associations to attract the event to the destination — to increase visitation or attendance — but there’s a lack of dedicated funding that supports associations or event owners once they’re confirmed in a destination to pursue any kind of change agendas that would require a bit more than lip service,” she told Convene.

“This has become an obstacle because we’ve got associations wanting to do this but not having the resources. They’re being invited to do impact and sustainability by the destinations to pursue the destinations’ strategic objectives, and yet the destinations are not really putting money on the table. They’re running these pilots, but there’s no plan for succession once the pilots are over,” LeClerc said.

Going Beyond Lip Service

A gap between destinations’ subvention offerings and event planners’ expectations is another key takeaway from the report. A staggering 95 percent of associations specified that destinations they work with fail to communicate how to use subvention strategically. The report specified the types of mission-driven support that associations most frequently request from destinations. These include financial support (87 percent), tools to measure impact (66 percent), sustainability guidance (53 percent), connections to local stakeholders (45 percent), and accessibility/inclusion support (34 percent). By contrast, the top priorities for destinations who responded to the Conferli study are economic impact, delegate numbers or hotel nights, and sector alignment — for example, wanting to be seen as an accessible destination.

Any guidance is better than none at all, but some destinations are way ahead of the game. LeClerc pointed to Destination Canada’s International Convention Attraction Fund, created in 2024, as an example of a subvention program with clearly communicated objectives. Associations have the opportunity to include a legacy plan with their initial application in order to bolster their chances for subvention funding. “They make legacy plans optional, but they give extra money and extra budget if an event does submit a legacy plan, and they provide a set of eight dimensions where the event could be looking at,” she said. “So it’s not very narrow, it’s quite broad, but it has to align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and it has to align with these eight dimensions. At this point, about a third of the submissions they’ve received have submitted legacy plans.”

In addition to monetary incentives, cities should offer tangible support to event staff and volunteers as planning ramps up. “You need to provide toolkits, person-to-person support, and training,” LeClerc said. “It’s really important that any subvention fund that would be developed to support a change agenda in the destination has resources put behind it to help clients implement that once they got that money.”

The study points to the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ) as an organization that is continually looking to maximize the impact of subvention programs beyond a transactional funding model. EFRJ works hand-in-hand with the local destinations that host its rotating biennial conferences in European cities to align their meetings with local initiatives in justice reform, social innovation, and community building. This co-creative approach lets local stories and stakeholders take center stage at the event, for example, when EFRJ met in Tallinn, Estonia last year, the conference focused on restorative justice in times of war, whereas the 2023 meeting in Pamplona centered on regional policy innovation. EFRJ also integrates informal gatherings and public events, like social dinners in local community centers instead of traditional restaurants, into the event schedule in order to deepen connections among participants and between attendees and host cities.

‘A Collective Move to Raise the Bar’

Looking ahead, Frens said the landscape will shift to a more focused, results-driven approach to subvention in line with LeClerc’s call for more hands-on support from destinations. “We’re moving from ‘how much’ to ‘how meaningful.’ Cities will differentiate themselves through their ability to measure impact, share transparent results, and actively help associations build legacy projects that align with local priorities,” Frens said. “Ultimately, this isn’t a race against each other, it’s a collective move to raise the bar, to compete on purpose, not price, and to show that every funded conference can leave a lasting positive footprint for people and place alike.”

Although the industry has a long way to go, subvention is still a powerful tool for change in the business events industry. “The first step is simple: Ask for subvention, and ask for it differently,” Frens said. “Many associations either don’t know support exists or only see it as financial aid. The report clearly shows that subvention can be far more strategic if associations use it to advance their own mission.”

It Never Hurts to Ask

Frens offered these practical considerations for event planners keen on maximizing the impact of subvention programs.

1. Define your impact goals early
Be clear about what you want your conference to achieve, socially, environmentally, or in legacy terms.

2. Include these goals in your RFP
Add a short section on “subvention & impact” that asks destinations not only how much they can offer, but how they can help achieve your objectives.

3. Prioritize partnerships, not discounts
Choose destinations that want to co-create outcomes and provide access to local stakeholders, tools, or expertise.

4. Track and share results
Even simple reporting on accessibility, inclusion, or carbon footprint helps build a case for smarter subvention use across the industry.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor.

The post How to Make Subvention Programs Work Harder appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

CL 26 will implement a number of leading-edge sustainability programs onsite and work with partners in Philadelphia to facilitate carbon offsets after the event.

When Convening Leaders 2026 kicks off on Jan. 11, it will mark an important anniversary in a meaningful location: 70 years of leading change in the business events industry in the city where the association now known as PCMA held its first conference for medical meeting planners in 1956. As historic as CL26 is, equally important is the forward-thinking way it is being planned, with an emphasis on sustainable practices alongside four days of cutting-edge educational programming and networking sessions.

Careful attention to detail in the months leading up to the meeting is key to rolling out a sustainability program that overshoots the mark — and that means measuring the event’s environmental impact beyond its carbon footprint. “When we think about sustainability, it’s not just environmental — it’s also social,” Corey Clark, director of events and experiences at Honeycomb Strategies, a Convening Leaders 2026 event partner, told Convene in an interview. Clark said that corporate social responsibility activities are now recognized as important components of overall event sustainability programs rather than standalone initiatives. “Convening Leaders always has a social impact program that goes above and beyond with an entire day of going on site to volunteer. So, there’s that very hyperlocal, very direct impact.“

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Cutting back on the use of materials that cannot be recycled is a priority for this year’s meeting. Clark pointed to signage as an example of how sustainable procurement not only saves on waste but reduces spending. “When digital signage is available, always go for digital,” she said. “If that’s not an option, the first priority should be to minimize printed signage and the second to think about what you are going to do with the materials afterwards, because a landfill is not an option. So minimize, then divert.”

Convening Leaders–related materials that can’t be reused will be carefully recycled. “PCMA upcycles their vinyl [signs] into bags and takes back their clings and recycles them through other facilities. So even the materials that can’t technically be recycled through a normal hauler — [meaning that] you can’t put them in your normal dumpster in the back of the facility — we bring in separate partners to make sure that they’re recycled or upcycled,” Clark said.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center also has a role to play in terms of overall sustainability at Convening Leaders 2026. The standardized layout of the District, where partners will have their activations during the event, means that it’s easier for them to bring recycled flooring and other booth materials to Philadelphia, rather than commissioning single-use items. This practice also diverts waste from landfills, which is important to keep the meeting’s footprint as small as possible and embody PCMA’s ethos of sustainability by design. “If you use custom-cut flooring on the show floor, the general services contractor doesn’t always take those materials back to be recycled because there are too many pieces and parts,” Clark said. “They normally just landfill it on site. But this is also going to allow all the destinations” and others in the District “to have non-custom cut flooring so they can potentially reuse their flooring as well.”

Food Science

Sourcing food as locally as possible and cutting back on meat are proven practices for sustainable food-and-beverage programs and CL26 will reflect these principles — as well as accommodate the full spectrum of dietary needs. “No matter who’s there, they should feel comfortable that there are options for them,” Clark said. “You’ll see really great menu signage this year as well, showcasing that there are options for everyone with major dietary limitations.”

Minimizing food waste also is a high priority and includes paying attention to portion and serving container sizes  — Clark shared the example of setting out 10-ounce carafes of salad dressing with the potential to refill them on request instead of using a more standard 20-ounce serving size for each table and keeping it full throughout the meal.

The final step for sustainable on-site F&B is redistributing any leftover food. “Convening Leaders does a lot of work to make sure that food is not wasted, and if it’s not going out to attendees,” Clark said, they can rest assured that it will be donated to local foodbanks.

Big Impact, Small Footprint

Convening Leaders 2026 aims to demonstrate how the business events industry can elevate its sustainable practices. Here are just some of the innovative sustainability programs in place in Philadelphia.

Recycling stations will be available throughout the convention center, giving attendees the opportunity to recycle everything from glass and plastic bottles to their event badges, which will be printed on eco-friendly paper stock.
Better Stands, an industry coalition dedicated to promoting, driving, and celebrating the transition from single use to reusable stands at trade shows, will issue Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards for partners’ activation stations based on their reusability.
The Philadelphia Convention Center will make charitable donations to offset electricity use on site, and Honeycomb Strategies, one of PCMA’s sustainability partners, will calculate the impact of attendee travel to and from — and the use of shuttle buses during — Convening Leaders in Philadelphia to facilitate carbon offsets after the event.
Sustainability-related programming at CL26 includes two sessions with author and climate advisor Joel Makower, an idea exchange hosted by the World Wildlife Fund’s Tara Dalton about data-driven approaches to reducing food waste, and sustainability tours of the Philadelphia Convention Center.
Convening Leaders attendees can participate in “Do Good, Feel Good” projects on Jan. 11 at 1 pm, Jan. 12 at 8 am, and Jan. 13 at 8 am and buy tickets for the annual Party with a Purpose, which will be held on Jan. 12 at 8:30 pm at The Fillmore​ on East Allen Street.

At the Center of It All

Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center (PCC), conveniently located downtown, checks all the boxes when it comes to sustainability initiatives. The 2 million-square-foot PCC has achieved numerous sustainability benchmarks, including the US Green Building Council’s LEED Gold certification, the Events Industry Council’s Sustainable Event Standards Gold certification, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v4.1 Operations + Maintenance (O+M): Existing Buildings Silver certification as well as LEED Gold certification for New Construction in 2011.

The PCC’s high standard for sustainability means a lighter lift for event staff and partners. “The facility is already EIC- and LEED-certified, which is huge,” Honeycomb Strategies’ Corey Clark told Convene. “Since the Pennsylvania Convention Center already has these programs in place, we don’t have to train staff and volunteers, and this makes it much easier for Convening Leaders to be sustainable from the beginning. The training has happened and they handle the donations and have great internal programs with local charities and nonprofits so that we don’t have to go out and find them.”

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor.

The post How Convening Leaders 2026 Is Embracing Sustainability appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

Oscar Sort helps people at airports, stadiums, universities, and other public places recycle correctly by interacting with screens placed above trash and recycling bins.

For event planners and venue managers, reaching sustainability targets can come down to something that happens in just a few seconds and is in the hands of others — the decisions that event participants make about how they discard waste.

Mistakes about what goes into which bin — recycling? compost? trash? — are common and can be costly, since even one item of nonrecyclable material tossed into a recycling bin can result in everything in the bin winding up in a landfill. Over the years, venues and event planners have come up with a variety of ways to help participants out, including installing multilingual signage near bins and recruiting volunteers to offer hands-on guidance.

A few weeks ago, while walking through a terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, I came across yet another solution: Oscar Sort, an AI-powered assistant that uses a scanner attached to a screen to identify waste and then directs users to the right bins, which are located just below the screen. Oscar was designed to grab attention — playfully animated eyes and eyebrows danced around a bright yellow background that flashed the message “Got Trash? Show Me” as I approached. I held up a napkin and then half a cookie, and Oscar let me know, with written messages and color-coded pictures, that both could go into the compost bin. It was surprisingly fun, and I learned something — I likely would have tossed the napkin in the trash had Oscar not caught my eye. (I ate the rest of the cookie.)

Created by the Vancouver-based company Intuitive AI in 2017, Oscar Sort can be found in airports around the world, as well as in stadiums, universities, attractions — and, increasingly, at convention centers and events, said Joanna Carson, who works as Intuitive AI’s marketing lead and has a background in event marketing. Oscar was launched into the event world in 2024 at a regional MPI event in San Francisco, where “the positive response made it clear that Oscar Sort was solving a real problem for event planners and venues,” Carson said. Since then, growth has been rapid: Oscar Sort is now on site at events nearly every week, she said. In December, the waste-sorting system will be in five major venues in Las Vegas during Amazon Web Services’ annual 60,000-participant global conference, AWS re:Invent. In addition to events and sponsors that contract with Intuitive AI for specific programs, the company counts two convention centers among its customers that offer Oscar Sort to their own clients — Chicago’s McCormick Place and Toronto’s Enercare Centre.

How AI Improves Recycling Accuracy

One of the things that makes Oscar work so well for events, Carson said, is that it can be customized to local recycling guidelines as well as to the types of waste that will be circulating at specific events. “We can make sure that Oscar is preprogrammed to know exactly where those things go,” she said. Oscar also can be programmed to use multiple languages, she added, but it uses color and images to direct users to the right bins to remove any language barriers. And Oscar only picks up waste items — not names or any other data about users — and is GDPR compliant, she added.

Carson shared a case study reporting results from the 40,000-participant International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) Expo 2024, held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, to demonstrate how AI can improve recycling accuracy. Six Oscar stations were placed throughout the center, where over the course of the event, they diverted 5,480 pounds of food waste from landfills and improved recycling and compost diversion rates by 30 percent. And in August, when Intuitive AI partnered with Coca-Cola to bring Oscar Sort to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Oscar Sort recorded more than 450,000 engagements and achieved a 90 percent sorting accuracy for cans and bottles over a two-week period, Carson said.

Cheeky or Corporate

Oscar Sort also lends itself to sponsorship and exhibitor strategies, including using its gamification features for lead generation, Carson said. Users can interact with the screen beyond receiving waste-sorting directions, by way of trivia questions, games, and other activities. “Every event has such a different tone,” and Oscar’s personality and graphics can change to match the event vibe, Carson said. “For example, when we’re at Global Marketers Week, we are very cheeky because marketers love cheekiness. But when we were at an Workday Rising event a couple of weeks ago, it was branded in a very corporate way. We can white-label Oscar.”

While Oscar Sort can help event planners solve the immediate problem of what participants do with the waste they’re holding in their hands, a big part of Oscar’s mission is getting people excited and engaged with the concept of the power of recycling in general, Carson said. Intuitive AI’s founders, CEO Hassan Murad and COO Vivek Vyas, were robotic engineers who felt the impact of the waste crisis in their homelands — Pakistan and India, respectively — so deeply that they wanted to do something about it, Carson said. Oscar Sort was created to address the problem of recycling contamination due to a lack of knowledge and confusion among the public.

“Recycling is one of the biggest parts of positive climate action — if you double the world’s recycling rate, you can reduce global carbon emissions annually by 25 percent,” Carson said. “Recycling has a terrible reputation, for very good reasons, because every municipality does it differently. So there’s a lot of work to be done, but the idea that recycling doesn’t work in its truest sense is just completely false.”

There have been successes in improving every aspect of recycling along the supply chain, Carson added. “But if we don’t make the right choice at the bin as consumers, every single part along that supply chain — and every part of those improved processes — is in vain.”

Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor.

The post How AI Can Help Humans Get Recycling Right appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

New survey data from American Express suggests that sustainability plays a supporting role, rather than a starring role, in business events.

The results of American Express Global Business Travel’s (AmEx GBT) annual Meetings & Events Forecast are in. What role does sustainability play now and into the next year in the work of the 600-plus meeting professionals across eight countries who participated in the survey? While it made it into the report’s top five takeaways, sustainability has more of supporting than starring role, although it’s something planners acknowledge is a growing expectation among their audiences.

Compared to five years ago, attendees want meetings to give them more visible sustainability measures (40 percent), like reducing plastics and using sustainably sourced food and drinks. The expectation is that events leave a positive legacy: social, cultural — and environmental. For 38 percent of organizations, this is now embedded in their meetings policies.

“Sustainability is a business and social imperative, but it is also personal,” Eloisa Urrutia, head of sustainability for AmEx GBT Meetings & Events, said in the report. “It’s emotive, drives loyalty, and inspires. Post-event surveys consistently show that well-executed sustainability ranks among the top drivers of attendee engagement.”

Taking a Backseat

Despite their audiences’ expectations that their events demonstrate sustainability, it isn’t a top priority for the year ahead for around one-third of respondents. Nearly three out of 10 said that improving sustainability initiatives and measuring “is still a pending item — behind reducing costs and boosting attendee engagement.” Respondents to Convene’s most recent Meetings Market Survey (results to be published in our December issue) also said that sustainability has taken a backseat to expense control, with several commenting that being sustainable can cost more.

Another gap when it comes to sustainability practices is measurement. Only one-quarter of respondents in the AmEx survey currently track CO2e emissions and only 28 percent said they will prioritize improvements to sustainability metrics in 2026.

Here are the sustainability practices implemented by AmEx survey respondents’ organizations:

 38 percent said they have a sustainable meetings and event policy
 34 percent are minimizing disposables and prioritizing sustainable materials and production.
 One-third are offering sustainable F&B — local, seasonal, and plant-based.
 31 percent are prioritizing sustainable venues — 23 percent said a key factor for destination and venue selection in 2026 is sustainability impact assessment.
 30 percent implement waste-avoidance practices, which includes food donation.

When asked to choose among eight practices that they use in their meetings program, a majority (64 percent) selected defined sustainability goals. However, that was the least-often selected option. Chosen by 76 percent of respondents was meeting approval processes, followed by centralized staff for meeting planning and execution (73 percent). Other more popular practices included inclusion of virtual and hybrid meetings (68 percent) and inclusion and culture considerations (67 percent).

AmEx GBT recommends five action areas for 2026, and the fifth suggests using sustainability to increase your event’s appeal: “Think about how you can go beyond compliance to use sustainability as a creative and brand advantage. Use the latest technology-driven measurement tools to prove that doing good is also good business.”

“Companies are now evaluating events across three key metrics: return on investment, carbon impact, and return on experience,” according to Julien Houdebine, global chief sales & revenue officer for Accor, in the report. “Return on experience is a qualitative metric that seeks to answer the question — did the event deliver on the emotional needs of attendees?”

Convene Meetings Market Survey Responses

We also asked Convene’s Meetings Market Survey planner respondents how sustainability factors into their work practices. In response to the question of how their business model has changed in the past year, around one-quarter (26 percent) said they have invested in sustainability and DEI programs. Only 5 percent noted a decrease in their organization’s commitment to sustainability over the past year. Nearly eight in 10 say it has stayed the same and 19 percent said it has increased.

For most, sustainability is not top of mind when first designing their event program — only 18 percent said it is part of the event’s concept generation. The majority start thinking about it when the internal team starts planning the event, about six to seven months out. One-third has developed a clear sustainability strategy and plans, while more than half of respondents have developed initiatives or activities to drive sustainable impact. Including sustainability requirements in RFPs has grown as a practice, but that doesn’t necessarily signal deep investment. One in four have a formal sustainability policy, one in three have a strategy, and fewer have staffing or budgets dedicated to sustainability initiatives — and that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Here is what some Meetings Market Survey respondents had to say about their sustainability efforts:

“We’re starting small. Strategic F&B planning to avoid food waste. Annual gift bag full of swag is now a gifting suite so they can pick what they want. Adding more tactics year to year.”

“Over the last year, we’ve made sustainability a higher priority in our events by reducing single-use materials, moving more resources online, and choosing vendors who align with eco-friendly practices. We’ve also emphasized waste reduction, encouraged recycling and composting, and looked for venues with strong sustainability policies. These changes have helped us lower our environmental footprint while setting a positive example for attendees.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

The post Have We Moved the Sustainability Bar? appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

ACS Fall 2025 took place Aug.16-21 at Washington, D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

More than 10,000 chemists traveled to the U.S. capital in August for the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Fall 2025 Meeting. In addition to offering a robust scientific program, the event demonstrated the society’s commitment to sustainability by cutting energy use and food and plastic waste over the course of five days. “Sustainability is a core value of ACS, so we select venues and vendors based on their commitment to sustainability,” said Liz Huh, vice president of events, meetings, and expositions at ACS.

The specifics of ACS’s meeting sustainability initiatives are determined by five overall goals — focusing on energy, reducing plastic waste, saving fuel, conserving trees, and demonstrating the society’s commitment to green meetings. “We confirm early in the planning process that vendors practice sustainability and ACS publicizes the sustainability efforts of the partners during the registration process so attendees are aware,” Huh said.

ACS Fall 2025 whole-heartedly embraced the organization’s five pillars of sustainability. This meant not only reducing emissions but encouraging attendees to think of themselves as stakeholders in the game by embracing green transportation traveling to and from Washington, D.C. and utilizing ACS-provided shuttles during their five days in the city.

Green by Design

At this year’s meeting, event organizers worked with local stakeholders to track energy use at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and meeting hotels, including carbon emissions, pounds of material recycled and composted, and water and electricity utilization. “We look for partners that have processes in place to track and report metrics such as energy usage, water consumption, carbon emissions, and waste diversion,” Huh said. “The same applies for food and beverage: The venues must have established relationships with local vendors for sourcing ingredients and prioritizing seasonal offerings on their menus.”

Meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center helped ACS save fuel by concentrating meeting venues. Additional meetings were held at the Marriott Marquis Washington, D.C. and Westin Washington, D.C. City Center, both within walking distance, which reduced the number of shuttles needed. Buses ran every 15-20 minutes and schedules were posted throughout meeting venues, reducing the need for attendees to use taxis or ride-share services. To save even more fuel in terms of transporting food to the center, the planning team ordered as much locally produced food and beverages as possible — labeling the local ingredients used in buffet meals to raise awareness among attendees — and renting live plants and using only locally grown flowers in arrangements.

In addition, ACS Fall 2025 was almost entirely paperless. Badges printed on recycled paper and lanyards and clips made from recycled materials demonstrated the society’s commitment to a circular economy. The society also used digital signage as much as possible, provided a digital program on the ACS website and in an event-specific mobile app, and used badge scanners instead of paper drink tickets at receptions. The meeting was also virtually plastic-free, thanks to water refilling stations — equipped with glassware rather than disposable cups — throughout the convention center and meeting hotels. ACS also provided attendees with a map of all meeting venues that included locations of recycling bins and water-filling stations.

Sharing Is Caring

Partnering with meeting vendors who share their sustainability goals has been key to ACS’s progress toward greener meetings — and demonstrating this commitment to stakeholders year after year. The society uses its website, conference app, pre- and post-event emails, and on-site digital signage to communicate with attendees about green-meetings practices. They even encouraged attendees and exhibitors to take individual action by providing sustainability tips online and through on-site digital signage These included booking non-stop flights in economy class and opting for keyless check-in and room entry at their hotels. The ACS mobile app also sent attendees push notifications reminding them to recycle their badge and lanyard at the convention center or partner hotels.

Transparency around sustainability goals and communicating ACS’s commitment to achieving them is also part of the society’s overall event-marketing strategy. “We want to position ACS meetings as accessible, relevant, and engaging to professionals across scientific disciplines and in a variety of career stages,“ Huh said.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor.

Learn more about ACS’s sustainability initiatives.

The post 5 Metrics to Focus on for Greener Meetings appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

Hospitality professionals who work all along the Texas Gulf Coast will gather to collaborate on regenerative tourism practices.

Next month, the inaugural two-day Turning the Tide regenerative tourism summit will be held in Port Aransas, Texas, designed to “demystify regenerative tourism, making its benefits clear, actionable, and inspiring to travelers and stakeholders alike,” according to the website for the event. 

We reached out to Visit Port Aransas to learn more about the conference. Our questions were answered by Visit Port Aransas President and CEO Brett Stawar via email.

How did the idea of a regenerative tourism conference hosted by your DMO come about?
In 2024, the Visit Port Aransas team embarked on a months-long process to define a strategic plan that would reflect our commitment to becoming the most sustainable destination on the Gulf Coast. The plan was named “Envision Port Aransas,” and it called for a sustainable coastal tourism program. How could we become known as a sustainable tourism destination ourselves and how could we share that knowledge with others to lead to a better Gulf Coast? Turning the Tide is the brainchild of our attempt to answer those questions.

What is the overall goal of the event and how is it being funded?
The overall goal is to position the Gulf Coast as a leading region in thoughtful, sustainable, and truly regenerative travel, built on the foundation laid at this event. Attendees will pay a registration fee to help offset costs, but the majority of the funding will come through sponsorships. We wanted to make this conference an affordable and accessible time of learning for any who wish to further sustainable initiatives. Our main backing sponsor is Madden Media, Visit Port Aransas’ advertising agency of record. We are grateful for their dedication to the future of the tourism industry. We also have support from the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, where the event is being held.

Tell us about your participants.
Our goal is to have a mix of tourism industry professionals, including destination marketing, municipality, and parks and recreation representatives from the Gulf Coast. We have an attendance cap of 50 people, and we are hoping to get an array of individuals from across the entire Gulf Coast.

A conference like Turning the Tide is a prime opportunity to provide not only education, but also camaraderie. Getting people together in the same space and time allows for free flow of information. There are as many commonalities between Gulf Coast destinations as there are differences, and somewhere in those commonalities lies the future of regenerative tourism.

How will the event itself be an example of taking a regenerative or circular approach? What sustainability initiatives will be included in the execution of the event?
Beyond understanding the framework for regenerative tourism, we will identify concrete next steps for regional collaboration, funding, and resource mobilization. We really want to emphasize active participation and the development of strategies that can be implemented effectively.

We are aiming to make the event itself as sustainable as possible. Our closing event, “The Last Light,” will take place at the Lydia Ann Lighthouse and will feature a menu entirely sourced from Port Aransas and the South Texas area. Local chef Matt Axtell will serve crab caught right off the lighthouse, oysters from Texas Clear Water Oyster Gardens, and more. From reusable name tags to a partnership with “Fill It Forward,” a reusable water company that will donate to the Amos Rehabilitation Keep with every fill, we aim to practice what we preach.

Can you provide one or some concrete examples of what a regenerative tourism experience would look like on the Gulf Coast and how it would differ from an experience that doesn’t prioritize sustainability?
Regenerative tourism goes far beyond the environment, though that of course is always top of mind on the Gulf Coast. In many cases, regenerative tourism comes down to listening. You have to listen to your community, to your experts, and to your research.  An experience that doesn’t prioritize sustainability would emphasize “taking” instead of “giving.”

Regenerative tourism looks like inviting visitors with shared values who have a respect for the local way of life, the environment, and the businesses they patronize as opposed to visitors who have a carefree, “I’m on vacation so I can do what I want” attitude. In Port Aransas, for example, that can look like inviting visitors to take part in volunteer opportunities at the Port Aransas Community Theatre or beach cleanups with the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, ecotourism experiences like those at the Port Aransas Nature Preserve, and even fishing trips with expert guides who emphasize sustainable practices like fishing line recycling, Texas Parks and Wildlife guidelines, and video catch and release.

How is group business — using a regenerative approach to hosting conferences — part of the conversation?
There will be group sales and meetings focus within several presentations, specifically included in basics in regenerative planning with examples of volunteer opportunities and best practices for group and meetings markets. Also, the panel will be discussing these topics with a lens on what the industry (hotels/restaurants/group organizers) can do to support and engage in regenerative practices.

From a business perspective, conference groups are a way for highly seasonal destinations like those on the beach to keep the doors open and the lights on in the off season. It allows for our restaurant workers to be employed yearlong instead of for three months, and for our town’s residents to continue to enjoy amenities beyond the summer season.

Is Turning the Tide a way of showcasing Port Aransas as a leader in regenerative tourism as well as a way of collaborating with other destinations in the region so that a rising tide lifts all boats? (Couldn’t help myself.) In other words, what about destinations that are competing for the same business? Is the overarching goal a legacy that benefits the entire region?
Cliche as it may sound, a rising tide lifts all boats is absolutely the mindset here. We envision this conference as a way for all Gulf Coast communities to work together towards regenerative tourism. A regenerative future takes more than Port Aransas, but we are grateful to be able to bring together some of the pieces to help us all head in the right direction. Gulf Coast destinations may overlap sometimes when it comes to competitive markets, but there will be no destinations worth visiting if we don’t all commit to a future where sustainability is the standard, not a “nice to have.”

Please give us a taste of the content you will be exploring.
We’re grateful to be inviting some of the nation’s top leaders in regenerative tourism down to the Gulf Coast. Aaron Salā, President & CEO of the Hawai‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau, will dive into the work Hawai’i has done to preserve both environmental and cultural assets and expand on his views of the future of tourism. Cathy Ritter of Better Destinations, LLC, a top voice in sustainable tourism, will cover the basics of regenerative planning. Nate Wyeth with Visit Bend, Oregon, will cover Bend’s “Leave No Trace” campaign and how destination organizations can market with purpose.

We will also have several local environmental experts, like Katie Swanson with the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, and Jace Tunnell with the Harte Research Institute, do some level setting for the challenges and opportunities faced by the Gulf Coast.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene

The post Lifting All Boats appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

The Creative Bureaucracy Festival aims ‘to use the most sustainable alternatives always’ to reduce the environmental impact of the annual event.

“We are very, very aware that events by themselves are not the most sustainable things,” Johanna Sieben, director of cluster public sector and engagement/deputy managing director for the Berlin-based Falling Walls Foundation, told me when we spoke earlier this month. Falling Walls is a supporting institution for the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, whose 8th edition was held June 5 at Festsaal Kreuzberg, an event venue in Berlin, Germany. More than 2,100 professionals from government, politics, civil society, and other public administration organizations attended on site and another 2,000-plus viewers participated in the one-day event via livestream.

Despite the fact that events exact a toll on the environment, Sieben said the Creative Bureaucracy Festival strives “to use the most sustainable alternatives always” to reduce its footprint. Here are a few of their efforts:

Go local — “We try to connect with other events and find people who are already in Berlin for our speakers,” Sieben said. “People, of course, fly to conferences. That’s a big, big part of the carbon footprint for conferences. We try, at least, to combine the festival with other events or where people are here for longer.”

The festival’s musicians are also local to Berlin, as are the food trucks, and production staff, to both support the local economy and to minimize the event’s carbon footprint.

Make it timeless — “I think every year we are getting a little bit better about throwing away less material,” she said, citing how any logos that are printed for the festival do not include the year. “That’s important to us. Everything can be reused. Our crew always wears T-shirts. The first year, the logo on the crew T-shirt had the year on it. We were like, damn it. But our whole organization sleeps in creative bureaucracy team T-shirts. We’ve been reusing them. Now we have it without the year, so people can wear them every year.”

Follow the signs — Almost all signs are printed on cardboard. “We really just do plastic where there’s absolutely no other way,” Sieben said. Nametags are also printed on paper.

Producing a fully sustainable conference or event, Sieben acknowledged, “is hard, very hard.” She pointed to the trash that is an inevitable output of events. “I think it’s something we all need to be very, very mindful of — how we can reduce it as much as possible.” And she has her eye on other elements of the event that are ripe for improvement, like leaning toward a more plant-based menu. “There is still room,” she said, “for us to grow.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

Learn more about the Creative Bureaucracy Festival at creativebureaucracy.org.

The post 3 Ways This Global Festival for Professionals Embraces Sustainability appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

Rishi Varma explores themes of environmental justice in his new play ‘Sulfur Bottom.’ Photo by Austin Pogrob

Climate Week NYC, organized by Climate Group, returns to New York City, Sept. 21-28, bringing together heads of government and leaders from the world of business, tech, academia, and civil society.

One of this year’s Climate Week themes is environmental justice, and — being that the event is hosted in the home of Broadway — one of the methods of exploring this topic will be theater. “Sulfur Bottom,” a new play by Rishi Varma, will host four special performances in collaboration with Climate Week NYC, highlighting “the vital role that theater can play in promoting climate action,” according to a post on iloveny.com. “Through these performances, the production invites attendees to reflect on their own relationship with the environment and consider the actions necessary for a more sustainable future.”

“Sulfur Bottom” is described as an “eco-gothic drama” that brings the audience into the lives of a family experiencing the devastation of environmental collapse over a 40-year span. The Climate Week performances will include unique programming such as post-show talkbacks, partnerships with local environmental justice organizations, and community engagement activities.

“Being an official event of Climate Week NYC is an incredible opportunity to bring environmental conversations into a shared space where people can feel their urgency,” playwright Varma said in the post. “Theater invites us to confront big issues like climate justice not through statistics, but through empathy. I hope ‘Sulfur Bottom’ adds a meaningful voice to that collective effort.”

As the post points out, this collaboration demonstrates the power of storytelling in driving social change. Reading about this initiative reinforced a conversation I had just had a day earlier about the role theater can play in events of all kinds with Alex Gallafent, an executive director at global design and innovation company IDEO, known for its human-centered approach to problem-solving and its application of design thinking.

Gallafent’s background is in journalism, design, and theater — he earned a master’s degree in classical theater from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art — so it’s no surprise that one of his pet peeves is how innovation theater is often looked at negatively by event organizers as an approach to engage their participants.

“Theater is a good thing,” he said. “Theater is a craft. Theater is amazing. The theater creates a magic circle and enables you to step into a different sort of state and provides guardrails for you” to consider and experience things in different ways. It’s an aspect that he said he always tries to keep in mind for event experience design. When deployed correctly, he said, meaning in a way that the audience welcomes as innovative, theatrical techniques make it possible for people to “truly arrive somewhere that’s worth their time.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

Learn more: Rishi Varma talks about his new play — including the production’s sustainability initiatives — in this Climate Weekly NYC post.

The post Environmental Justice as Theater appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.

To date, planning protocol has been to consider weather in a short-term way. The time has come for a shift in thinking about climate risk much earlier in the event-planning process.

Sustainability consultant Shawna McKinley, an instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, began collecting data about extreme weather and its impact on events in response to the questions that her students were asking about how climate change would affect events. To help answer them, McKinley, principal at Clear Current Consulting in Vancouver, Canada, began building her own database of event case studies, and in 2023, embarked on an in-depth analysis of Canadian events disrupted by extreme weather that calendar year. “It was a way of trying to put some quantitative data and impact behind how this is affecting us,” she told Convene. Last year, McKinley released a report based on her analysis, “Extreme Weather and Event Planning Risks in Canada,” which looked at 72 events disrupted by extreme weather in Canada in 2023 and how event organizers coped with them.

Soon after the report’s publication, McKinley read an article about the rise of weather-related disruptions in the live music and festival industry by Milad Haghani, an associate professor and principal research fellow in resilience and mobility in the University of Melbourne’s department of Infrastructure Engineering. McKinley reached out to Haghani to ask if he would like to collaborate on an article using an expanded data set, which led to an interdisciplinary collaboration between McKinley and Haghani, as well as Paul Geoerg, a professor at Akkon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, and Claudio Feliciani, Ph.D., a professor from the University of Tokyo.

McKinley is the lead author of their article, “Mapping the impact of extreme weather on global events and mass gatherings: Trends and adaptive strategies,” which appears in the September 2025 issue of International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The article analyzes how extreme weather has impacted global events between 2004 and 2024, based on 2,091 events in 54 countries disrupted by severe weather, wildfire, or other climate-related impacts. The article also investigates the impact of climate change and the high costs associated with event disruptions.

The article is a “bit long” and dense, McKinley said, and she and her co-authors created a one-page summary for event professionals, outlining key takeaways from the research. Among them is the researchers’ conclusion that most weather events disrupting gatherings were intensified by human-caused climate change, “underscoring  the urgency to reduce emissions and plan for future, rather than past, weather risks.” The summary also offers examples of how event organizers are adapting to extreme weather by shifting dates and locations, investing in weather monitoring, altering venues, and redesigning event formats.

‘We need a much more holistic approach’

The researchers’ monitoring of events disrupted by extreme weather continues — as of July, they had documented just over 500 weather-disrupted events in 2025, she said. On Aug. 14, McKinley was interviewed by Gloria Macarenko, host of a Vancouver-based radio program, about the effect of heavy rains on Crankworx, a two-decades-old global mountain biking competition and festival, scheduled for Aug. 8-17 in nearby Whistler, and how destinations and event organizers can respond to extreme weather.

“As long as we’ve had events, we’ve had weather, and we have always been planning for it to an extent,” McKinley told Macarenko. But the planning protocol has been to consider weather in a short-term way, “taking stock maybe the month around the event, and then we plan accordingly,” she said. “But when we start to think of this as an issue connected to climate change, the weather that we’ve had in the past isn’t necessarily the weather that we should be planning for in the future — or even what we are experiencing now.”

It’s become important to look at climate risk much earlier, when making decisions on siting and scheduling and budgeting for an event, McKinley said. “We need a much more holistic approach.” It also is important that destinations and event organizers look at events as a partnership, McKinley added, because many events’ organizing hosts aren’t local to where events will take place, like FIFA, which will hold matches in Vancouver during the World Cup next year. “It requires destination managers and people who are hosting local activities to prepare organizers for what to expect and to pay attention — again, not to what’s happened in the past, but to climate projections,” she said. Many destinations have prepared climate plans and projections to anticipate things like severe urban rainfall at unusual times of year and are familiar with weather-related emergency preparedness and alert systems and protocols around things like wildfires, McKinley said. “I think the destination-host partnership is going to become even more critical.”

Barbara Palmer is deputy editor of Convene.

More From Convene

“Events Professionals Offer Advice on Meeting in Extreme Heat” includes a number of extra precautions event strategists can take to keep everyone cool, and safe.
“How Extreme Weather Impacts Events” covers McKinley’s research report on the impact of extreme weather on events in Canada in 2023.

The post Planning for Extreme Weather appeared first on Convene 4 Climate.