Conference organiser Delegant, has planted five trees to celebrate being a finalist in the Professional Conference Organiser of the Year Award at the Conference News Agency Awards.
I spoke to the two co-founders, Adrian Parrott and Angie Major about what sustainability means to the business, and how they approach being green in events.
Adrian kicked things off, talking about the start of the business’ sustainable journey. He said: “Over the last few years, we noticed things needed to change in terms of sustainability. Offsetting is the somewhat easy route, but we also wanted to change the way we operate by minimising and sharing travel and doing meetings over zoom.”
Angie Major, spoke about industry-wide sustainability, she said: “If we all play our part, we can make a big difference.”
Adrian echoed this point, saying: “It’s not just us that are making this change, many venues we work with are reducing their uses of single use plastics and generally being more sustainable. It’s something businesses must adapt to, in order to be more appealing to customers.
“For example, we are seeing a lot less giveaways at conferences. Some of the things at stands were, quite frankly, not great for the environment and not terribly useful. We’re seeing a lot more creativity, companies doing donations on behalf of each stand visitor is a good example of this.”
The question that arose was around greenwashing towards the end of our interview, with so many businesses doing sustainability to tick the box, what separates Delegant from the rest?
Adrian replied, he said: “We’re doing the sustainable drive, because we believe everybody should be doing it – not just to get that competitive edge. In fact, it’s something that we rarely shout about and we never do it from the commercial point of view. We just do it.”
