AGF Insider: Trends and Best Practices in Sustainability with Sam Booth
Welcome to AGF Insider, our exciting new series where we bring you monthly interviews with industry experts.
Each month we catch up with an industry leader in the sustainability world to find the current trends and best practices.
This month we catch up with Sam Booth, AEG Europe’s Director of Sustainability
What are the best practices that you are seeing give the best results?
The switch to circular cup systems has really helped improve waste and recycling rates while also helping to educate fans about new ways of doing things within the event sphere. The increasing uptake of renewables is also super encouraging, ranging from big corporates signing up to Power Purchase Agreements through to smaller venues now finding solar panels to be the economical solution to high energy bills.
It really does feel like the sustainable solutions are starting to move mainstream in so many areas and it’s very encouraging!
What trends are you seeing this year?
It feels like there’s a new and welcome focus on the impact of food within the event ecosystem. For a long time this has been largely ignored, but recent studies have shown how important food choices are to an event’s overall sustainability.
Whether this is the initiation of carbon labelling at many venues and festivals or commitments to increase plant-based ingredients in menus, it shows a growing awareness of how important our food system is to creating a truly sustainable future.
What are the obstacles?
As with many things in the event industry, the main obstacles to most things are time and money. We work in an incredibly inventive, forward looking sector, however genuinely new ways of doing things take a lot of planning which there often just isn’t the capacity for. Equally, in a time of ever-increasing costs, new outlays to fund sustainability initiatives can be resisted – even if they would eventually lead to savings.
What’s the next big thing in sustainability in events?
I’m a firm believer in the power of technology to fundamentally change the picture when it comes to sustainability. With this in mind, I think we’ll see more bio-degradeable, completely plastic free and low-carbon packaging coming to market (like the amazing Notpla), as well as new renewable technology which will change how we look at festival power.
What would be the biggest game changer from your perspective?
Low cost, high quality electric vehicles with access to plentiful charging infrastructure. It’s common knowledge that the largest impact of almost every event is caused by travel of all kinds, so delivering this to fans, tours and suppliers would dramatically change the picture overnight.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of AGF Insider. Stay connected with us for more interviews and insights from industry leaders. Don’t miss next month’s interview, where we continue to explore the forefront of sustainability in the events industry. Thank you for joining us, and remember to follow us for the latest updates.
