More than 80% of event professionals have already committed to a CSR approach. In other words: organizing a sustainable event is no longer a differentiating bonus, it's a standard expected by your attendees, your clients, and your stakeholders.
And with the CSRD directive, which requires large companies to provide detailed carbon reporting including their event activities, regulatory pressure now adds to public pressure.
The trouble is, events involve so much attention to detail that getting started with organizing sustainable events can seem complex. Where do you start? Which actions can most reduce your event's carbon footprint?
In this article, we've gathered every action to consider for organizing a sustainable event, while still taking care of the experience your attendees have.
Ready to boost your attendees' engagement, and your own, when it comes to protecting the planet?
Why organize a sustainable event?
Thinking about environmental impact when organizing your events is no longer just a nice-to-have: it's an essential criterion.
Indeed, your clients and attendees are increasingly attentive to the environmental impact of the companies they interact with. Hence the need not only to have an internal CSR policy, but also to uphold it when organizing your events.
And the benefits of a sustainable event don't stop there. By adopting a sustainable approach, you can also:
- Meet new regulatory obligations. The CSRD directive requires large companies to provide detailed non-financial reporting, including a complete carbon footprint assessment. Your corporate events, as an operational activity, fall within this scope, and often represent a significant emissions category you can act on.
- Inspire and raise attendees' awareness of sustainability, and boost your brand image as a responsible company. Sustainability generates positive emotions, even during your events.
- Optimize your costs. Reducing waste, limiting consumables, or working with local suppliers can generate savings over the long term.
- Strengthen your standing with your stakeholders. Adopting a sustainable approach improves the relationship with your sponsors, partners, and employees: they're all looking for projects aligned with their values. On the agency side, CSR has become a structural criterion, systematically included in advertiser briefs (LÉVÉNEMENT Barometer).
All good reasons to get started with more responsible event organization.
"In a world where every action counts, organizing a sustainable event is no longer an option, but a necessity. Far from limiting creativity, this approach pushes you to rethink every detail with intelligence and commitment, offering a more authentic experience aligned with the expectations of attendees who are increasingly aware of their impact. Every responsible event is an opportunity to prove that innovation and sustainability can go hand in hand.", Joy Grand, Marketing Manager at Digitevent
The main sources of environmental impact for an event
Launching a CSR-oriented event means anticipating every factor that could impact the environment, and optimizing it.
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, adopted by ADEME, defines 3 scopes of greenhouse gas emissions:
- Scope 1 covers all of a company's direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This includes, for example, heating for premises or emissions from vehicles used.
- Scope 2 corresponds to indirect GHG emissions linked to the production of energy used: electricity, steam, cooling, or heating.
- Scope 3 includes all direct and indirect GHG emissions from the various stakeholders: suppliers, vendors, and clients, across the entire value chain of the event.
In events, this last scope carries the most weight. In concrete terms, 70 to 90% of an event's emissions come from attendee transport.
Three structural choices therefore determine most of your event's carbon footprint: format (in-person, hybrid, or virtual), venue (ideally served by train), and the geographic makeup of your audience.
More broadly, make sure to optimize the following five main GHG emission categories:
- Purchases: accommodation, staging, signage, etc.
- Transport: of goods, staff, speakers, and attendees
- Energy consumption: lighting, heating, air conditioning
- Food
- Waste production
All of these factors need to be taken into account when organizing your eco-friendly event. This is precisely what's known as a low-carbon event: a structured approach to reducing the footprint from end to end.
12 actions to implement for a sustainable event
Want to organize an event that's as planet-friendly as possible? Apply the following twelve best practices to reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible.
1. Choose a sustainable venue
French event venues are reinventing themselves to address the challenges of ecological transition: low-carbon renovations, adaptations to climate change, and more modular, more sober spaces (UNIMEV, Event Data Book).
The range of sustainable event venues is therefore growing quickly: it's up to you to select them over venues less committed to the environment.
In concrete terms, think about:
- Choosing venues with official certifications, such as the HQE label, the EU Ecolabel, or Green Key.
- Calculating the geographic center point of each attendee's starting location, to choose a venue that limits travel, ideally in the city, with public transport close by.
- Making your event virtual or hybrid to limit its carbon impact, especially when your audience is geographically dispersed.
To go further, discover our selection of sustainable venues in the Paris region.
2. Reduce the impact of transport
Since attendee transport is an event's biggest source of emissions, it's also lever number one.
For example, you can:
- Provide guests with soft mobility services: electric shuttle, bike with driver, shared vehicles.
- Set up financial incentives for attendees who use sustainable modes of transport.
- Deploy a carpooling system among attendees, that can be integrated directly into your registration platform.
Also remember to set rules for your team members during venue visits ahead of the event. For example, limit visits to venues you already know, and if the trip can be done in under three hours, systematically choose the train over the plane.
3. Offer sustainable catering
In France, food accounts for 25% of French people's carbon footprint (ADEME). Offering more sustainable catering can therefore have a major impact on your event's carbon footprint.
In concrete terms:
- Offering a menu that's (at least partly) vegetarian rather than meat-based. Livestock farming is indeed responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide (FAO).
- Setting up a menu based on seasonal, local products, from organic farming.
- Deploying a reusable eco-cup deposit system to limit disposable cups.
- Using reusable tableware. Single-use tableware has in any case been banned under the EGAlim law since 2023.
Associations such as Traiteurs de France can point you toward the most sustainable caterer.
Also make sure to carefully anticipate quantities to avoid food waste. To limit waste, offer doggy bags to attendees or work with an outreach organization that collects unused food to redistribute it.
4. Choose vendors committed to the environment
Let's focus on scope 3, the one that carries the most weight: your vendors need to be just as committed to sustainability as you are.
Do a benchmark of CSR-oriented vendors. When you contact them, highlight your CSR policy to check that they're aligned with your own commitments.
And ask them for tangible, quantified proof of their sustainable practices: the carbon impact of the solutions offered, eco-friendly delivery methods, certifications obtained, and continuous improvement approach.
5. Limit energy use during the event
Your event's ecological footprint can significantly decrease if you optimize on-site energy consumption.
For lighting, make the most of natural light, as well as the lighting already available at your chosen venue, without adding more. Also opt for low-consumption LED lighting.
For sustainable water use, choose a venue equipped with water-recovery systems or reduced-flow taps. Set up drinking-water stations where attendees can refill their bottles.
For heating and air conditioning, make the most of natural ventilation. In summer, choose a venue that lets you use an outdoor space. If you need heating or air conditioning, set up a temperature-regulation system to keep the environment comfortable without overconsuming.
Overall, remember to use energy-consumption monitoring systems to reduce it as much as possible. Also encourage your attendees and staff to turn off lights and electronic devices they're not using.
6. Select sustainable materials
For your decor, your giveaways, or your packaging, favor sustainable materials.
For example:
- Signage made from recycled cardboard rather than plastic.
- Sustainable giveaways: recycled or recyclable materials, branded water bottles, useful items rather than gadgets.
- Digital gifts (gift cards, show tickets, donations to a charity) rather than physical gifts.
Don't hesitate to build a narrative around your sustainable material choices, to demonstrate their CSR impact and inspire your attendees.
7. Set up a waste-management process
An event, even a sustainable one, inevitably generates waste. It's up to you to set up the right process to manage and make the most of it.
To do this:
- Set up an on-site sorting system, including composting for organic waste.
- Put up clear signage to get attendees involved in responsibly managing their waste.
- Assign a dedicated team to waste management during the event, to make sure nothing is left to chance.
The zero-waste event doesn't exist, but your event should get as close to it as possible.
8. Limit the impact of your event communications
Ahead of your event, remember to limit the environmental impact of your communications.
Favor digital formats. If you choose physical materials, opt for printing on recycled and recyclable paper, with eco-friendly inks.
What if you digitized your invitation and registration system?
Your attendees are now used to registering for their events online, on their own. Deploy an event platform that lets you send invitations and manage registrations with complete peace of mind. That's what Digitevent offers, as a partner for your sustainable events. The added bonus? Our servers partly run on renewable energy.
9. Reuse equipment and materials after the event
Say goodbye to single-use: make sure to reuse all equipment for other upcoming events. This means designing your furniture, staging, and decor so they can be reused afterward.
Another option: source this equipment secondhand, or rent eco-designed furniture from specialized vendors.
10. Calculate the event's carbon footprint in advance
Before the big day, after going through all these best practices, be sure to calculate your event's theoretical carbon footprint. It's the only way to identify priority levers for action, and to measure your progress from one event to the next.
There are platforms specifically dedicated to organizers of low-carbon events, such as:
- ICE (Impact Carbone Événements): a simulator developed by LÉVÉNEMENT, based on ADEME's Bilan Carbone® methodology, which estimates a project's carbon impact from its earliest planning stages.
- CLEO Carbone: a platform for measuring and reducing emissions developed by UNIMEV and Choose Paris Region, with preferential rates for UNIMEV, LÉVÉNEMENT, or Traiteurs de France members.
Note: SMEs can access the Diag Décarbon'Action program funded by ADEME and Bpifrance, with a net cost of €6,000 (excl. tax) to carry out their Bilan Carbone® assessment.
Remember to include the carbon footprint of your digital actions in this calculation (online invitations, digital communications, attendee app, etc.).
The best practice? Train one of your staff members in this calculation, so they can carry it out before each of your events. And don't forget to factor this data into your event KPIs to steer your approach over the long term.
11. Set up CSR governance within your organization
Whether at an agency or on the client side, make sure you have dedicated governance for your sustainable events strategy.
This body needs the skills to measure an event's carbon impact and stay continuously informed about best practices. It could be a staff member specifically dedicated to this mission or, within a company, someone from the CSR team in charge of events.
This governance makes complete sense in a CSRD context: the data collected event after event feeds directly into the company's non-financial reporting.
12. Aim for ISO 20121 certification
The ISO 20121 standard organizes the steps for responsibly managing and producing an event activity. It structures a continuous-improvement approach in terms of CSR.
Its revised version, ISO 20121:2024, has been better aligned with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, and strengthens requirements around transparency, inclusion, stakeholder engagement, and shared governance. From now on, organizations must demonstrate concrete, defined, and measured results.
Good news: France is the world's leading country for the number of ISO 20121 certifications, with 45% of certificates issued. And the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games were the first event in the world certified ISO 20121:2024. What if you followed the same path?
One last piece of advice: use every sustainable event you organize to inspire the next one. Gather feedback from all your stakeholders (internal clients, external clients, attendees), build a directory of environmentally committed vendors, reuse staging and decor, and reapply the best practices that worked.
Want to digitize your registrations and limit the footprint of your event operations? Request your Digitevent demo.
V2 - 30/06/2026
