Good social image, being socially responsible, having a positive reputation and knowing the other companies that are “being green” are very important motivators for creating green events, according to Özen Kırant Yozcu, associate professor at the ISAG-European Business School, who will be presenting “How Events Contribute to Sustainable Destination Development” during MPI’s European Meetings & Events Conference (EMEC), 22-25 February in Istanbul.

In advance of EMEC, we caught up with her to discuss how events impact sustainability, how planners can position themselves as sustainability champions and what attendees can expect from her EMEC session.

Can you tell us about an aspect of events that has a particularly negative impact in terms of sustainability?

We all know that events are an important motivator in tourism and most destinations use them in their development and marketing plans. Moreover, going “green” has become a global trend and it is important to understand the perceptions of green meetings, their importance and behaviour intention. However, events have negative environmental effects like high energy consumption, producing of greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation, generating high ecological and carbon footprints, noise pollution, traffic congestion and parking problems, disruption of normal way of life, overcrowding, etc. Also, there is a direct relationship between the size or scale of the event and the impact it produces.

How can an event planner begin to position herself/himself as a sustainability champion?

First, event planners or organizers should believe that they have to start to organize green events. As a researcher, I see that the big problem in our industry is not to start. I understand the barriers and their excuses so we should work on how to overcome these.

What do you hope EMEC attendees will take away from your session?

I am very excited to be with MPI community in Istanbul.

As I am an academician and researcher, I am not organizing events, I am analysing the events.  I will give good examples of sustainable events from many different points—for example, how events affect local community or diversity or local employment, etc.

My primary goal is to create awareness about green/sustainable events and how these events lead sustainability of a destination. Good social image, being socially responsible, having a positive reputation and knowing the other companies that are “being green” are very important motivators for doing green events. So, in my session, I want to emphasise how sharing is significant in our industry.