The marketing industry really mentions sustainability at every turn — in advertisements, across promotional activities, and on every corner sustainable packaging is touted. But how much of that is actually true? Industries that promote themselves as green, often without substantiation, frequently leave behind a significant amount of waste after events staged for promotional or similar purposes. That's why today we've decided to undertake an investigation to determine how genuinely sustainable an industry of this scale—one that truly needs sustainable practices—actually is.
We are aware that events—especially mega and large-scale ones—are extremely costly. Contributing factors include fireworks, the volume of waste left behind composed largely of single-use items, and excess food, which can result in tens of kilograms being discarded.
The events industry has a default problem with greenwashing. Why is that? An event organized, for example, in the summer months that targets international guests and runs for several days is an ideal example of an event that, unfortunately, cannot be sustainable unless it changes its focus. Sad but true. The amount of waste, CO2 emissions, and the damage such an event inflicts on the venue's infrastructure are, regrettably, irreversible. Add to that the current state of accommodations and venues—which in a very small percentage are sustainable—and you end up with a very small number of events that can be fully sustainable.
And this is where the biggest problem in the Croatian events industry becomes apparent:
- Lack of sustainable accommodation
- Lack of sustainable venues
- Lack of trained event managers who know how to organize sustainable events
These three problems are evident to anyone who has even lightly scratched the surface of the event management industry in Croatia. We can certainly examine them more closely and propose solutions that we believe will pull the industry out of a domain where an unsustainable label is the norm.
- Lack of sustainable accommodation – the fact that our hotels do not pay attention to sustainability, and that the market will eventually force them to, is evident. Unfortunately, many hoteliers do not consider sustainability because they think it is costly. The opposite is true. The benefits of such investments are highly profitable in the long term; they simply need to decide to move in that direction.
- Lack of sustainable venues where events can be held – we recently conducted research on sustainable venues and were shocked to discover how many do not think in that direction, nor do they want to. Therefore, for this segment, education and continuous communication of the benefits of this way of doing business are clearly something we will have to change for a long time.
- Lack of trained event managers – it has happened more than once in our years of operation that we meet organizers who promote themselves as experts in this field, but when you scratch below the surface you realize that these 'experts' believe a sustainable event is one without printed materials, where waste is recycled and little food is thrown away. That is precisely why we say — education, education, and education!
To keep it brief, I believe cohesion and collaboration across these three segments are key to transforming an industry that is among the least sustainable into one that meaningfully contributes to sustainability, and does so with substance. Because if you do something without substance, it's better not to do it at all.