The executive director of Eventia reviews the progress of the events organisation's corporate social responsibility initiative.

Some 12 months ago the Eventia One Future initiative – designed to help members deliver lower-carbon events and more responsible corporate behaviour – was launched, with a number of member agencies signing up to become early adopters.

Of these, Bank Sadler, BI, Grass Roots, Maritz, Skybridge, TFI Group, THA, Universal and World Events conducted a carbon audit of their emissions for fuel and energy use over their last fiscal year. The results of these were that the average emissions were 431 tons of carbon per agency per year (the equivalent of flying 1,962 people from London to Barcelona), equating to an average of 3.21 tons per employee.

Four of these agencies chose to mitigate their corporate emissions through the One Future programme, with the result that in the last year 3,100 trees were planted in a national forest in Leicestershire and more than £2,500 was put into the Solar Kits project for energy education in primary schools.

Aileen Reuter, Eventia board member for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Maritz's marketing director, commented: “All of the agencies are now working hard to reduce their emissions and using the results of their carbon audits to drive focused actions to deliver measurable results. We hope to be able to see concrete results of these changes through a follow-up audit later in the year.”

Earlier this year Eventia also revealed an online overview of CSR to provide members with an accessible reference tool on all aspects of the subject, from definitions to practical tips, and from greening your business and events to case studies and a national and international green credentials overview.

The intention is to build on this platform going forward, to be an industry that leads the way in emission reduction and socially responsible activity.

Izania Downie is executive director of Eventia