Beyond Eco-Friendly: Putting Sustainability at the Center of Meetings and Events

Beyond Eco-Friendly: Putting Sustainability at the Center of Meetings and Events

This content was created collaboratively by Destination DC and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

While not a new subject, sustainability’s definition has taken on a life of its own over the last few years. What began as a way to think about making meetings and events more eco-friendly has evolved into implementing steps to create an ecosystem for meetings, events, and conferences — as well as their host destination — to thrive.

As the nation’s capital and one of the most powerful cities in the world, Washington, DC, is at the forefront of this green wave. Sustainability is not an abstract idea to the region’s multitude of federal, regional, and local civic leaders innovating smarter ways to do business through legislation, transportation, infrastructure, business development, and more.

In this report, Skift Meetings and Destination DC partnered to examine the importance of building a sustainable ecosystem for events from the perspectives of planners, attendees, and the host destination.

As demonstrated in this report, employing these best practices yields results that prove how meetings can be a positive source of change via areas and topics such as:

• The importance of innovation and sustainability
• Setting sustainability goals from the inception of your event
• Having access to top-tier thought leaders
• Offsetting attendee travel
• Improving accessibility and inclusion as an element of sustainability
• Seeking out revitalized buildings and venues to showcase the future

This content was created collaboratively by Destination DC and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.