Green Events Forum Established in SA | Marketing Ideas | Blue Lemon

The Event Greening Forum has been established to promote and embrace sustainable investment principles within the meetings, incentives, conferences and events industry in South Africa. This development is supported and accepted by a group of role-players in the industry who met at the inaugural meeting in Cape Town on Monday 19 October 2009.
In his opening speech, Rashid Toefy CEO of the CTICC (one of the sponsors of the event), stressed how important it is for the industry to realise its responsibility in the fight against the effects of global warming and climate change. “We have to be innovative and make sure that we understand the full concept of sustainability. Event greening is not just about the environment, but also about the financial and social responsibilities – people, planet and profit,” he said.

It was agreed by all working groups at the inaugural workshop that the industry needs a central point from where it can extract information and get support / guidelines for hosting sustainable events.

Main objectives

• Be industry driven and have mandated representatives from main industry role players;
• Set minimum standards around event greening within the industry;
• Determine baselines which can be used to set specific targets and timelines for event greening and encourage measurement and evaluation;
• Raise awareness and promote training opportunities for event greening principles and practices;
• Ensure appropriate marketing and branding to promote event greening principles and practices;
• Provide a platform for sharing information and best practice around event greening principles and practices;
• Work towards a common understanding which can help to integrate current greening initiatives and role players, rather than develop an independent entity;
• Initially work as a voluntary system, but encourage appropriate regulation;
• Promote communication with government and encourage them to adopt and promote event greening processes, standards and regulations;
• Raise funds to ensure the long sustainability of the forum; and
• “walk the talk” through its actions.

Main sectors

• Professional conference organisers (PCO), meetings incentives conferences and events (MICE) and destination marketing organisations (DMO)
• Exhibition and events organisers
• Suppliers and sub-contractors (infrastructure, AV, transport, products, etc).
• Venues

Major role players (SAACI, EXSA and TPSA) who were represented at the inaugural workshop have given their initial support for mandated involvement, as well as dissemination of information within their structures. These organisations will be invited for more comment through their national structures.

Strategic partners

• GMIC – Green Meeting Industry Council
• IFEA – International Federation of Events Association
• MICE – Meetings Incentives Conferences and Events Association
• FEDHASA – Federated Hospitality Industry of South Africa
• SATSA – South African Tourism Services Association
• GBCSA – Green Building Council of South Africa
• GreenStaySA
• Government structures
• Labour within the events industry
• NEEA – National Energy Efficiency Agency
• SITE

A working committee was formed and will meet in November again to discuss the way forward for 2010.