Using Data to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint at Events

Alyssa: Great events create great brands, and it takes a village to put on an event that engages, excites and connects audiences to your brand. And we're that village. I'm Alyssa. I'm Paulina. And I'm Rachel. And you're listening to Great Events, the podcast for all people interested in events and marketing. Hello everyone.

What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? Once again, my name is Alyssa, and welcome to this week's episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. This week we're going to be talking about sustainability. We have started a little bit of a mini-series on sustainability topics. Today we're going to be really focused on data and reporting, and also how you can think about taking your sustainability efforts to the next level through technology.

Once again, I've talked about this on previous episodes, but April is Earth month, so we are dedicated to up-leveling your knowledge as an event professional in this space and really better understanding what you can be doing today to make your events more green and to tap into the sustainability narrative that is very much taking our industry by storm.

I am very excited to introduce two experts in this arena. I am joined by Kimberly Meyer. Kimberly Meyer is co-founder of The DataAngel. The DataAngel happens to be one of Cvent's Affinity partners. If you are not aware of that program, please check it out on cvent.com. I'll give Kimberly the floor just a second to introduce herself.

But we also have a second guest on this podcast as well. Kris Justice, my colleague who works very closely with me on sustainability conversations within our customer base. Kim. There's two Ks. This one's going to be fun today, guys. Kris is a member of our customer success team. She is a senior manager of customer success for our European group.

Kris is based out of Germany so she's got a little bit of a leg up from our North American counterpart where we seem to be lagging in the sustainability narrative. So I'm very excited to introduce two of these wonderful women onto this podcast today. Kimberly, I'd like to pass the floor to you to give a little bit more background what you're working on, sustainability, what The DataAngel does, tell me all the things.

Kimberly Meyer: Great, Alyssa, thanks so much. So I am the co-founder of The DataAngel and The DataAngel is a reporting and data correction automation company that works inside of Cvent - hence the partnership. I've been doing data work in the industry way back even previously to Cvent, which is now I believe 20 plus years old.

You've had your 20 year birthday, so I'm very familiar with a lot of work around, around analytics and reporting in lots of categories. I also am the co-founder of something called the ELX or Event Leaders Exchange, which is a group of leads of corporate global events and meetings programs, and I'll talk a little bit about that later because there certainly is a lot of interest and work being done around how they can help their corporations to achieve sustainability goals.

Alyssa: Awesome. Super excited to have you on the podcast today, Kimberly. Okay, Kris passing the floor to you to give a little bit more background to your work and what you're doing on sustainability with Cvent customers now.

Kris Justice: Thanks Alyssa. Like Alyssa said, I am a senior manager for customer success. I am based in Europe, which is a really interesting place to work with Cvent.

We have a portfolio of customers that we manage that are primarily up based out of Europe, including the UK. One of the reasons that I became an internal expert on sustainability is because of questions from our customers. So, like Alyssa was saying we're a little bit ahead of the curve here on questions from sustainability and sustainable meetings and as a way of supporting our customers and ensuring that they can use the Cvent platform to support meetings. We been developing guidance for a while now and started educating both internal and externally on those learnings.

Alyssa: Awesome, Kris. I got it right this time. Very excited to have you as well. All right, let's get into the conversation here. So, Kimberly, I'm going to start with you since you introduced The DataAngel as this reporting and data and integrations kind of expertise, I'd love for you to start to talk to us a little bit about accurately and the accessibility of data for sustainable programs and how that works with technology and really how do you accurately measure sustainability sustainably? Can you talk to me about that?

Kimberly Meyer: Well, the truth is, Alyssa, if you want me to talk about how to do it effectively, accurately, and sustainably, we're going to have a really short conversation. But there are some great things on the horizon. Probably many of the folks who listen to this podcast are aware that it's tough today because there are new tools coming out every day around carbon measurement. Certainly the transient travel world and air travel is reasonably covered by that.

And some of those, the folks who've done some reporting tools in that realm have also come out with meeting and event carbon tracking. But the challenge, at least that I hear in the marketplace is still much of the work is manual, meaning you've got to ask event planners to do all the work in planning and creating and designing and taking care of their attendees, and then enter a heck of a lot of data manually in order to get, in today's world, to some semblance of accurate data.

And I say some semblance because you should probably know we also all struggle with airlines, hotel chains, just lots of different ways of calculating carbon, and so there's not really an industry standard that anyone has seen yet. And so that's a challenge. There are some solutions, but let me throw it over to Kris for a sec to see before I talk about guesstimating or estimating, if Kris has any thoughts to that. And let me just say, for those who may not have met Kris Justice in life yet, Kris and I have had the opportunity to work together on various types of projects in many areas in the industry and she really is the smartest person in the room. No one knows she has a PhD. I mean a PhD! Over to Kris.

Alyssa: Yeah. Kris, you missed that in your intro. You know, you're allowed to do a little humble bragging on a podcast. That's what it's for.

Kris Justice: Right. I can see that's true. It is in comparative literature though, so I feel like-

Alyssa: The application not is not so great here. Right.

Kris Justice: Although I do get to speak French and German to my customers, which is really exciting and obviously something that I may have picked up in that PhD program. So actually, in terms of what you're hearing, Kimberly, I'm hearing the same thing, which is, and,it's actually something that I have a real concern about in terms of our industry's ability to measure carbon at scale, and that's really that question of overhead. So when we talk about overhead, normally we're talking about finance and there are also financial repercussions, obviously to the time that's required in order to do accurate carbon tracking. And when we start to scale, then that really becomes something that we have to think actively about and find these solutions for.

So if you're doing five to 10 meetings a year, then entering the data manually is not a major challenge. It's not a significant drain on your overhead, so  it's manageable, but many of the clients that we work with, and that I know Kimberly works with as well, they do that many meetings in a half a day, right?

They're doing, they're doing five to 6,000 meetings a year, are exponentially, even more globally, and then the needs become quite different. And the systems that have been put out, what I would consider almost like ad hoc carbon corporate tracking, are not something that's going to work at that scale.

So, how do we grow? And obviously that's where there's a ton of value for us being able to do that because the carbon footprint of 5 to 6000 meetings is quite a lot and being able to bring that down on huge impact as well. So yeah, an area of interest for me for sure. And one way I've been thinking a lot about how we can use data and technology in order to reduce that the overhead of tracking our carbon emissions.

Alyssa: Yeah, and I was just going to add to that, Kris, something that I've noticed, or at least certainly an evolution or an up-leveling of this conversation has been getting out of just one off event calculations. I think, you know, within the last, maybe let's say past five years or so, I think there had been an interest to calculate the carbon footprint of, let's say the largest conference. Right? But now Kris, to your point, what you're saying, this need for scale is to take a much more programmatic view of the meetings and events program and to understand what is that total footprint of everything that you're running, and certainly that's being requested upon by those leaders of sustainability councils or committees or who's driving this from the top.

So I think that is a shift in how we think about that carbon calculation. Kimberly, I'm curious if you're working with customers to calculate that programmatic view, or what does the current state of affairs look like when it comes to calculation.

Kimberly Meyer: Yeah, so one of the things that we are doing as The Data Angel, and as I say that I will, my next sentence will be, and you can do yourselves, you don't need The Data Angel to do what I'm about to say, but what we are doing is working with customers in order to look at what is a darn good approximation.

So we don't want a planner to have to go to, you know, the Marriott West End of London, if there is even such a place, I'm making that up. But ask a lot of questions and figure out data for each hotel, for each restaurant, for each transport company. What we want folks to do in order to again, get to some decent numbers right away and without so much overhead, is we are finding, tables, if you will, reputable reasonable tables on, for example, hotel three star hotel in London. What is the general carbon output? What are the general numbers around that? It exists in the airline industry. It exists in hotels to some extent. You can do it in ground transport, as well as in restaurant meals, and the idea is, let's just go ahead and approximate. We won't be perfect, but quite frankly, I'm not even sure if you know the same flight on Delta or British Airways or American to London from New York is even the exact same calculation. So we're approximating and we're applying that to each and every meeting on an automated basis, which takes some of the hard work out of the equation. And as I say that couple of resources, because folks can do this themselves. A couple of resources might be, BP has some great ones, they are manual tools, but if you go to their website and Richard of the BP program has done some great work with the whole team. Then for example, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in the United States, their hotel school has done some great work in putting together enormous databases on hotel carbon output and does a lot of research in that area. So these things exist. It takes a little bit of work. It's in its infancy, but it's a way to get to, again, those five or 10,000 meetings more reasonably than asking planners to enter that data.

Alyssa: Kris I have a curiosity for you. Do you see with our customer base that approximations are good enough, right? Because there are, we are starting to be held to stricter standards when it comes to, and I mentioned this already, but reporting upwards to the sustainability councils, oftentimes those are being recorded out to a board, certainly with a large global enterprise.

There are stakeholders that are starting to look at this data more intimately. So is that a conversation that you're having with, with Cvent customers on the market at large, around the need for accuracy in the reporting?

Kris Justice: Yeah, that's a great question. We are still seeing people feeling like they do need to have a certain level of accuracy but I think we're probably going ahead in the direction that Kimberly predicting and already sort of forging the way on because it just look at a reality in the face. It is not scalable. It just isn't. And so one of the things that I think we are going to head in is exactly this question of like, yes, we want to make sure we're directionally correct, right? We want to make sure we're approximating with a scientific basis. And that's where, the work that she was just referencing. As long as we have resources or sources that we consider trustworthy and verified and so on who have done the extra legwork in order to get as close as possible, I think there is going to be a level of acceptance even up to the boardroom level that that makes sense, because they also have to look at, obviously the other questions like cost and time to the company, to understand, you know, and balance those things. So just like every other business decision, that's weighing certain concerns then coming out with a solution that is, mostly good with the least damage, we're probably going ahead in that direction.

I think it's a pretty brilliant way to go for organizations that are really struggling. That question of overhead and time, which can lead to a certain kind of paralysis. And that is the most dangerous thing of, this, “I'm afraid to get started because than afraid of how much time it will take”. There might be a way forward with that approach.

Kimberly Meyer: Yeah. I can say one of the corporate event leaders I work with made their business case to their sustainability group of a Fortune 50 global company and literally said, you know, I can do an estimation, good estimation based on some research, with basically a six months of one of my full-time staff as a project.

Or I can ask you for a full-time additional employee as well as $300,000 to try to get closer to what the rest of the corporation is doing. But that data, again, just doesn't really exist well today, yet in the hospitality industry.

Alyssa: Good is good enough right now, essentially? Yeah.

Kris Justice: Oh, it's just it's a way to prevent paralysis. That’s where we are right now, getting people to start the ball rolling. We've got quite a number of customers and others in the industry who are our personal customers who are at that point and struggling to make that move.

Alyssa:. Let's talk about prioritization of the data because we've talked about, you know, 80 is the new 100 and making the moves. Is there an area where we should focus on our programs, where we can scrutinize a little bit more heavily? I know I have heard through market research that travel is the largest area of carbon spend. But are there other areas of the program where we should focus on data accuracy and really accurate reporting that could inform our decision-making process and the sustainability space?

And either one of you, I will open that to, to either Kimberly or Kris.

Kris Justice: Kimberly, I think you mentioned in a recent conversation, I kind of want to throw this to you on us on around the influence of food and research being done around food. I was kind of curious if you have some thoughts on that, especially vegetarian food options and local.

Kimberly Meyer: Yeah, so definitely everyone I think in the industry is jumping onto air travel because it is probably the most furthest ahead in terms of good data and measurement and feels very obvious to everyone. And second to that, I think in meetings programs, folks are looking at the general hotel carbon output.

I've got two thoughts. So first is switching gears a little bit, some of the event leaders I work with are really talking about, you know, how they've been given either a carbon budget or that coming down the pike for them and really talking about changing the conversation because the carbon budget is great if we had 10 years of accurate data and we don't. And the idea of really curtailing travel or events in person, and especially after what we went through with Covid is really difficult for many companies who need that engagement and we won't talk in this podcast about the power of person to person engagement, but we know how important it is.

Alyssa: We have enough episodes on that and you can look in the repository.

Kimberly Meyer: So we're really talking about what tools are out there and there are fuel companies doing it, and how do we really look at just making better choices about what events and travel should be in person, should be, as opposed to, you know, on a virtual platform or hybrid, and making really good choices. The ones that are important, going ahead and saying, let's use our carbon budget there, but let's not worry as much about was it 10 tons last year and three tons this year, or exactly what those numbers are.

Let's just choose really carefully. And then to Kris's question, I've got some great event leaders talking about having their sustainability groups, the folks who are in charge of sustainability for a Fortune 50, doing some research on, for example, on food, right, and on meat versus vegetarian as Kris mentioned.

The data isn't out yet from that group, but they're working hard in thinking that perhaps if we just take our thousand person convention or even our 50 person meeting and we switch even one meal out from a meat-based meal to a vegetarian, we actually may end up, if we could do that at all of our meetings or many of them, having a much greater reduction in carbon output from reducing meat than we would from actually cutting back on flights. And so there's some really interesting measurement and some really interesting thoughts there around, how to change the conversation and still be able to do the things we need to do as humans, in terms of travel and is, as you know, benefiting our corporations, while still achieving sustainability that we all believe and realize is critical to our planet.

Alyssa: Kris, I think that's a really good segue for us to talk about what could a new normal of events look like with Cvent's customers and how could Cvent's customers somewhat, in a sense, lead the way for the rest of the event planning industry to kind of benchmark a new standard? How can we support our customers in doing that? Delivering these, you know, generalized best practices that might look like vegetarian options is the new default for F&B selection, for example.

Kris Justice: Yeah and, that's really where I think we may be headed. And it really brings together what Kimberly was just saying too about approximations.

So, if there are certain areas where we can have the most, we can invest our time to get the most accurate approximations, and then we set certain table stakes around those as an in events industry, then we kind of gain two things at once. Right? So we know, we obviously know about travel, we know about potentially different kinds of

venues with different energy classes, and then the other piece being food, obviously. And, of course then very carefully choosing the type of meeting, a virtual meeting and not always defaulting to live, but essentially what I would love to see us do as Cvent, as sort of leaders in the industry and planners executing against that, is putting some stakes in the ground around, these are the things that are table stakes, right? So things that are table stakes might be, you have a meetings and events program that is well-balanced between live virtual and hybrid. If you have an entirely virtual program, I mean, that's very sustainable, but interesting from are you achieving all your goals, but also if you have an entirely live no questions asked programme is that really a sustainable approach? So, a balanced program a standard of, for example, vegetarian meals and that that's something that we do across, not just ad hoc, but across thousands and thousands of meetings that are put on every year that starts to make a difference. Obviously significant, obviously positive bias towards sustainable event venues, right? That have highly efficient energy classes, that do have waste reduction programs and things like that. Those are the sort of three or four things that we can focus on to say at least these that we're going to cover, we're really going to be intentional about making sure these are covered for each of our events, that could make a huge difference. Rather than each individual person being like, did I forget about the newspaper, don’t deliver newspapers? And somebody else being like, maybe I should focus on the water or somebody else saying like, oh, maybe I should focus on, I don't know, local sourcing, but I'm going to have a thousand water bottles. Like, you know, it's just, it's so uneven right now, and it would be really great to see some defined-

Alyssa:, As opposed to adding yet another checklist for the planner. It becomes implied or implicit. Right.

Kris Justice: These five things, just do those things, for now.

Alyssa: What I find really interesting is I had a conversation with another sustainability partner at mid last year, maybe towards the end of last year, another podcast for anybody to explore if you're interested in this conversation further.

But it was about the notion of radical collaboration and partnership in this industry. I think that's something that's pretty common for event planners. It's the whole, you know, premise of this career is collaboration and partnering and suppliers on this delicate ecosystem where it takes a village really to put an event experience on.

I think we're entering a new phase where we need to push the boundaries with those ecosystem partners for them to take on some of these standards themselves. So for example, for hotels to also say, our vegetarian is the standard F&B model, and for you to actively choose otherwise, I think would be something that is radical, right?

It is something that is seen as so different, but it is this ecosystem of players that need to all kind of come together to make a coalition of sorts to push this agenda forward, this agenda of a new normal of events through the sustainability lens. I also know I had a conversation previously with a waste recycling expert that was more on the materials management, on the resource management, and we were talking about, you know, how we are no longer going to allow exhibitors to have paper products within exhibition halls. For one, the attendees don't want them anymore. So that there's this alignment of education as well on explaining to these, these individuals who come to your events, part of the ecosystem, that there is a new normal, there is a new standard for attendees, but also for a sustainable event. So I find this interesting, but it is truly a communication plan. At the end of the day, coordinating and collaborating with all of these individuals take that effort. Kimberly, do you have thoughts on that? And I saw you trying to jump in here.

Kimberly Meyer: I love what you are both saying and just real-life experience. One of my ELX members recently went to their hundred year plus conservative company who of course, like every other company, has major goals on sustainability and just switched the question around food.

Switch the question from at every meeting event, would you like vegetarian or another type of meal dietary, religious, would you like that? Would you like meat? And of course, also respecting religious and dietary other needs as well. And that question in a company that was quite historically quite conservative about the environment that their events would be in, it was ground-breaking, but those leaders did it and they had a lot of pushback, as I'm sure the exhibitors will push back some of them on paper, they did have pushback, but when explaining it with a good communication plan to their employees and customer, it all went really well for them.

So I think it's just taking that first big leap and making those changes that can have, as Kris said, let's just do a couple of big things that have a huge impact.

Alyssa: Yeah, and I don't think anybody could argue that change is easy, right? Like that's what change is all about. So it is taking a leap of faith. It is pushing something forward and then you adopt what will become the new normal, but, you know, that initial jump, that initial leap of faith that people could be willing to do something different is a little bit scary. And there's an acknowledgement around that too. I think. Kris, were you going to say something?

Kris Justice: It's so funny too, because we are already seeing it in places here and there and conversations and you know, we do have niches within the meeting and events industry. That one I was just thinking about is exhibitors specifically first as you mentioned them, because we, you know, usually we think of meetings that you put on a meeting, you have people come. But the exhibitors specifically, I remember, recently I was at a conference, a convention where there was a large exhibitor hall and they did something crazy - no carpet! And that was just somebody taking a major leap of faith and decided for sustainability reasons, no carpet. To me as somebody who, you know, is a casual attendee, honestly, and not really in the exhibitor world I didn't even notice it. I really didn't. And then others of course were like, I was so afraid. What would people think? You know, things like that. So it was just fascinating to see it from that perspective discussed by people who really had to take a leap of faith. And it turned out that for most people it was just a non-issue, you know? And there, I think hopefully there's other leaps of faith that we can take around food, for example, or exhibitors, frankly. You know, there's a lot of waste that goes into the stands and things like that. So like really rethinking what is expected of you and what you, what you think is expected of you versus what really you considered important. Apparently, I didn't know this, but carpet was considered. I just got to have carpet. And then when somebody finally broke the walls down and was like, maybe I'm just going to try it without, and nothing happened.

Alyssa: Nothing bad happened.

Kris Justice: It's a thing that gives you a new perspective and I'm pretty sure that same exhibition will not have any carpet next year or any year after.

Alyssa: Kris that is so funny because that is exactly what came up in this conversation with, you will hear this on another episode on waste and recycling, but we talked about carpet and carpet waste, and the secret world of carpet. So it's got me thinking that we do need to do a podcast or an episode certainly on expo waste and carpeting specifically because it is one of those kind of mystery areas of events that not everybody knows about and certainly don't realize the amount of resource waste that goes into that too. So it's so funny that you brought up carpet specifically because it came up on this previous episode.

Kimberly Meyer: Alyssa, I have to give a little plug for the IMEX shows in Frankfurt and Las Vegas only because for many years they've been doing a lot of work on sustainability and if anybody wants to learn more, I know they have experts at every show who can walk you through that entire show, and every bit of carpet, wood, everything, and how it's, you know, sourced, recycled, etcetera.

Alyssa: Love that. That's great. Certainly something that Cvent has participated in for many, many, many years. So great shoutout to IMEX.

Kimberly Meyer:. Yeah. So come to IMEX, come to my ELX program. If you are a corporate leader, go to the Cvent booth and learn about sustainability.

Alyssa: There we go. Perfect. The whole ecosystem right there, right?

Kimberly Meyer: Hey, can I change gears for one minute and, I am coming back to sustainability, but one of the things that comes up in these corporate conversations that I have with the event leaders is also around just, you know, the human environment and getting people in the workforce back to offices or meetings and events somewhat after covid, and also just retaining people today, it's a talent war.

And one of the things that, some of my corporates were talking about was really this idea of in pre-covid, many of us who worked for a large corporation would be really required to attend some internal and external meetings and events per year. So we knew that on our calendars, we had to attend a number of them. And sometimes that conflicted with family or personal or other things going on in life. And so it was tough. And so another idea that benefits sustainability as well is an idea that some folks are doing around a requirement for just a couple of meetings or events a year where, you know, they're looking at their employee teams and saying, we'd really, really like you to attend this in-person because your contribution in person, your innovation, your creativity is going to be really valuable and these other ones are optional. We, as a human, we understand that you've got things going on in life, so it may not be convenient to travel, and also we will be more sustainable if we give you the option, but don't require you in a situation that we'd love to have you there, but we don't believe it's as critical. We do believe you can contribute over a virtual platform. So anyway, just another thought on something for our corporate planners to think about.

Alyssa: Are we going to say something? Kris, I'll let you jump in if you wanted to.  I certainly could see that the hybrid format is giving individuals the option, I think, and not even just in a single event experience, but kind of a hybrid program at large.

Having options for virtual options, option for in-person. I think this flexibility notion is something where we are in it. We're in the thick of that, right? Like it's available now.

Kris Justice: Yeah, no, it's, I even see it privately with people have, like I do volunteering and we also try to be a little bit more flexible in that.

Of course, the other thing, this is one of those beautiful places where sustainability meets inclusion. You know, obviously that's one of those wonderful things where you're actually addressing two needs at once. Certainly the sort of optional meetings being able to include people who can't travel for various reasons is a way to make sure that you're still getting those valuable inputs from employees or from other attendees and so on. But doing it in such a way that people who aren't able to do that don't feel excluded. I know that I'm a single mom, so I can't just leave my children and fly off somewhere., but I would love to be included in certain meetings where it's important to be able to be there in some capacity. So those kinds of offers don't just help one audience, don't just help the planet, but they're actually, cover a lot of questions related to inclusivity and all kind of different audiences. So that gets me excited too when we do one good thing, usually there's a domino effect.

Alyssa: The ripple effect, yeah

Kimberly Meyer:. And of course, tracking a bit of this data in an easy manner.

I think the early kind of information I've gotten from folks is that people are making the right choices for themselves, and sustainability is part of that for their own families as well as, you know, their health, wellbeing, and sustainability. And travel's actually coming down a bit, but to the point we just made, they're still included, right? So they're included in person in really important things that need in person, and they're still included virtually at other times. So we all win, right?

Alyssa: It's part of this big equation that we have now to balance all objectives.

Kris Justice: Yeah. Kind of the human-centered approach. Right.

Alyssa: I love that. All right, Kimberly and Kris, so closing remarks.

Any final thoughts you want to leave our listeners with today? Kimberly? I will, I started this podcast with you. I would like to close it with you. Any thoughts?

Kimberly Meyer: Yeah, so I'm going to pick up on Kris's, just do a few good things and I would strongly recommend that people advocate for, let me just start tracking, but tracking with some good approximations that are out there in the industry today, so we do track something, but without that cost and you know, let's all start thinking more vegetarian.

Alyssa: Love that. Kris, how about you?

Kris Justice: Yeah, I would say picking up on some of what we said, you know, three to five things, start there and do them consistently. So, and obviously those three to five things can be the ones that had, you know, for sure have a higher impact, so do those consistently, do those across your programs, educate people about why I think you're going to find a lot more success that way than trying to do 20 different things at once. You know, consistency is key to getting started.

Alyssa: Thank you both so much for all the conversation today, Kimberly and Kris. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate and respect your brains on this narrative. Very, very much enjoyed having you on the podcast today. Listeners, we hope that you enjoyed our chat today as well, and you found some inspiration or certainly some, some key takeaways that will inspire you to think more sustainably about your meetings and events practices as well.

Once again, listeners, if you do have any topics or people that you'd love to add to our 2023 lineup, dm us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or send us a quick note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Once again, my name is Alyssa and thanks for tuning in to Great Events. See you next week.