Company MeetPoint is among 500+ organisations, supporting the Net Zero Carbon Event initiative. The Net Zero Carbon Events initiative, launched in 2021, is the events industry’s global campaign to achieve net zero carbon by 2050 at the latest, with an interim target in line with the Paris Agreement’s requirement to reduce global GHG emissions by 50% by 2030.

In December 2023, the Net Zero Carbon Events published seven guidance documents to support the event industry in achieving its carbon emissions goals. The seven guidance documents can be downloaded for free here at this link for the following areas:

• Smart production and waste management
• Venue energy
• Logistics
• Food and food waste
• Travel and accommodation
• Carbon offsetting
• Measurement

The Net Zero Carbon Events encourages collaboration with partners, suppliers and customers to drive change across the value chain. The complex value chain of events requires different industries to work together to integrate net zero approaches throughout each event’s lifecycle. Only with mutual collaboration of all stakeholders involved in event industry changes can be implemented and goals achieved. The Net Zero Carbon Events initiative focuses on bringing events themselves to net zero, in contrast to the current focus in industries of bringing organisations involved to net zero.

According to the Net Zero Carbon Events initiative, progress in different action areas is asymmetric as some industries are more complex than others, or form part of more mature industries in terms of their decarbonisation plans. Therefore the goal of the initiative is to align progress amongst stakeholders.

At Meetpoint, as event software solution provider, we develop our solutions with net zero carbon events in mind. Below you can find few options on how you can benefit from using event management software when trying to meet the net zero carbon by 2050.

Photo credits: The cover photo is AI-generated.

Here are few possibilities how to reduce your environmental impact for your events, according to the Net Zero Carbon Events initiative best practices, when deploying event management software:

Smart production and waste management area:

• Eliminate printed materials or reuse them multiple times: when applying event management software to your events, you can avoid printing participants lists and promo material. You have everything available in the cloud, anytime and from everywhere.
• Use (and encourage the use of) rental items, such as furniture or dishware, where possible: we offer renting the equipment for onsite registrations, with option for self check-in booth rental.
• Find more sustainable solutions for lanyards and badges and collect them at exit to reuse them at your next events: onsite registration can run smoothly with badge printing onsite, with no need to prepare everything before the event, and you print just for participants present. Additionally, you can choose environment-friendly badge to reduce the impact even further.
• Use digital show guides (e.g., through apps) and floor plans to eliminate printed material: with event management software you can use applications with all information needed for the attendees. No need to print event guides anymore.
• Avoid printed marketing and favour electronic communications as much as possible: Meetpoint event management software enables email marketing as well as SMS communications. No need to print material, you can communicate with event participants via digital channels.
• Digitalise processes (e.g., online booking, e-invoicing, e-registration): with event management solution you can digitalise all event promotion and organisation processes, from online booking, online invoicing, online registration, online payment, onsite check-in, etc.
• Encourage visitors to bring tickets in digital format: Meetpoint solution enables participants to safe ticket to the e-wallet to their phone where ticket can be easily found and used for check-in, using QR codes scan. Fast and simple.

Food and food waste:

Preventing wasted food, or source reduction, is the top tier of the Wasted Food Scale. The main focus in food waste reduction for events is on preventing food from going to waste. And with eventtech you can monitor the realtime data of number of registered participants before the event and you can plan the consumption accordingly. On the other hand, at the events, you can coordinate the food amount according to the realtime data of attendees actually present. With monitoring the number of people at the event, you can plan, prepare and serve only what is needed.