event:decision unveils 2025 edition of  “THE STATE OF SUSTAINABILITY IN THE EVENT SECTOR”

Specialist sustainability intelligence provider event:decision has today launched its latest white paper, “The State of Sustainability in the Event Sector: A Responsible Perspective (2025)”, offering deep-dive data and actionable insights for event professionals.

The report is downloadable here: https://eventdecision.com/state_of_sustainability_2025/

The event sector is a highly diverse & transactional yet creative sector. We include sporting events, cultural, community, conferences, experiential, corporate and brand activity within our remit. We deliver tens of thousands of experiences, every single day. Yet each event is different and individual. This poses both opportunities and challenges in sustainable product and delivery, unlike any other sector.

Despite initial and continued enthusiasm, and whilst the appetite for sustainable solutions is undiminished, financial realism and logistical pragmatism are driving many decisions in event planning.

event:decision’s “State of Sustainability in the Event Sector” offers a snapshot of how the sector is performing across environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions – and what must come next. Built on proprietary data from event:decision’s flagship tools – Track (global event carbon reporting) and Impact: Responsible Event Review (ESG performance audit) -the paper also incorporates external research from leading industry sources such as Amex GBT’s Meetings & Events Forecast, the BCD M&E Global Trends Survey 2026,  and the Oxford Economics Global Risk Survey.

Key take-aways for trade professionals

• Agencies continue with sustainability accreditations and embedding frameworks like ISO 14001 & Ecovadis within their own businesses.
• Carbon-footprint tracking is now widely cited as the go-to metric, yet many events still exclude major emission sources including delegate travel.
• Many decisions made in the standard planning process (destination & venue selection) are key sustainability considerations.
• Decisions made later in the process (menus, print, sourcing), whilst having smaller emissions impacts, are important for optics and brand-value.
• Social and governance considerations — including living-wage compliance, supply-chain transparency and legacy planning — continue to lag far behind the environmental agenda.
• Actioning these factors can now be measured, reported and benchmarked.
• Doing so adds significant value to the planning team or agency and can be considered a competitive advantage.
• Practical benchmarks: more than 5,500 data points from event:decision Impact Reviews and the Power 30 Most Sustainable Agencies campaign have been analysed to provide comparative performance baselines for agencies, venues and in-house teams.

A call to the trade: embed sustainability early

“As agency leaders and brand owners rethink live-events strategies, the number one barrier we’re seeing isn’t intent, it’s evidence,” said Matt Grey, at event:decision.

“The sector has reached a point where intentions meet accountability. If you can’t report the responsible performance across ESG of your event, and nowadays not just your carbon emissions but your social impact also, you can’t manage, improve and  deliver value to your stakeholders. Sustainable decisions really should be factored into the brief from day one. Including ‘sustainability’ at the end makes zero sense and wastes your time and budget.”

What event planners and agencies can now do

The paper offers seven strategic lessons for trade professionals, including: integrating sustainability KPIs into RFPs, using venue certification as a decision lever, including delegate-travel emissions in your emissions baselines, benchmarking the Social impact of your events and reporting decision-grade insights, not just ‘green’ tick-boxes.

Download the report

Access the full white paper at:
https://eventdecision.com/state_of_sustainability_2025/

---

Sponsored Content