There are sound economic reasons, as well as environmental ones, for understanding how much waste your event generates and what opportunities you have to reduce, reuse and recycle. For example:
- Visible waste and litter can undermine stakeholder and sponsor support for events, and even threaten their future as a result.
- Excessive waste on-site and poor management of waste streams negatively affects visitors’ experience and can discourage them from coming again.
- Waste-handling, transportation and landfill is costly for event organisers and for society as well as a source of harmful emissions.
Events can also be powerful platforms from which to promote behavioural change around waste, packaging and recycling, by educating visitors about their environmental impact and ways in which they can act more sustainably. Larger events also have the power to encourage more sustainable practices throughout their supply chain.
Understanding your event’s waste impacts, and opportunities to reduce them, should therefore be a key part of your planning and delivery.
What to measure
The most basic ‘input’ measure of waste assessment is the existence of waste plans and systems:
- Waste management plan in place (ASOIF reference EN-W1.1)
Developing a waste management plan is a first step towards adopting more sophisticated methods of measuring impacts and shows you are actively considering ways in which to minimise them, as well as thinking about creating different types of waste stream and identifying new recycling opportunities. Public and private sector funders are also likely to seek assurance that you have these plans in place.
More detailed ‘output’ measures focus on physical indicators, typically volume of waste produced, and the quantity that can be reused or recycled. Some public bodies will also require the measurement of specific waste streams (e.g. inert and hazardous) rather than the total only.
Recommended “output” measures include:
- Total waste produced at event site
- Waste produced per event-related visitor/participant
- Percentage of waste sent to landfill
- Percentage of waste diverted from landfill, including recycling, composted (ASOIF reference EN-W2.1)
- Percentage of food and drink containers made from recyclable/biodegradable material
- Percentage of signs, banners, tents etc that can be used for multiple years
More advanced measures for waste impact assessment involve tracking changes in waste output over time and/or tracking specific hazardous waste streams. These include:
- Waste footprint of event-related visitors
- Percentage of waste classified as inert/hazardous
- Changed composition of event-related waste streams
- Changes in amount of waste produced per event-related visitor/participant
- Changes in proportion of waste diverted from landfill (i.e. through increased recycling and composting)
- Reduction in waste produced at event site
- Reduction in waste produced per event-related visitor
- Percentage of construction using recycled materials
- Improvements in waste management infrastructure
The OECD considers these impacts to contribute towards the UN SDG Responsible Consumption and Production (Target 12.5).
Waste impacts: How to measure them
The volume, nature and destination of waste generated by an event can be complicated to measure. This is partly due to the variety of its sources (e.g. infrastructure development, event operations and visitor consumption), the mix of responsible agents (e.g. venues, local authorities, organisers and participants/attendees) and differences in legal requirements (e.g. new circular economy legislation in Scotland). Engagement with partners (typically contractors and local authorities) will therefore be important to data collection.
Scoping expected waste impacts, their drivers and management is appropriate within the framework of ISO 20121 (the International Standard on Sustainable Event Management), while organisers of smaller events are expected to prioritise process monitoring over quantitative measurement. Questions you should answer include:
- Is the waste strategy fit for purpose?
- Are waste facilities signposted?
- Are attendees told they need to deposit, reduce and recycle waste?
Relevant output measures can be developed with waste contractors and included in supplier contracts. For example, these partners will be able to estimate total tonnage of waste going to landfill as this is connected to their charges. Survey data is unlikely to be necessary to understand intermediate measures, as food and drink suppliers for example will be able to provide information on their packaging.
More advanced measures are based on monitoring over time, although some changes in gross volumes, recycling percentages or waste stream composition may be beyond your control as changes to regulations or landfill costs, for example, could affect them. Some advanced measurements may be expensive to produce as contractors may incur additional costs in more detailed analysis of event waste.
Waste impact assessment in action
Case study: 2023 Para Swimming World Championships
Case study: 2023 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships
Case study: 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships