A client symposium across two suites at The Grove, measured at 1,153kg CO2e. Over 99% of the production materials by weight were rented, which is as close to building nothing as an event of this scale gets.
CBRE Investment Management · The Grove Hotel · Hertfordshire, UK · 2025 · Real Estate · Design; Production; Project Management
A symposium is the client's own event rather than a trade show. CBRE Investment Management owned the room, the agenda and the guest list, so there was no neighbouring exhibitor to compete with and no organiser dictating the footprint. The audience was invited investors and partners. That format changes the economics entirely: on a one or two day hosted event, almost nothing is worth owning. The brief was an environment that carried the brand across two suites and left the venue exactly as it found it.
Almost nothing, deliberately, and that is the point of the page. Over 99% of the production materials by weight were rented. All furniture, all digital signage and all plants were hired. Live plants were returned to local florists to be used again. Digital signage was rented specifically to avoid producing multiple virgin material signs for a two-suite event, which is the substitution most conference producers never make.
What was fabricated was built not to be event specific. All stretch graphics and their frames carry no dates, no event names and nothing that ties them to this symposium, so they go into store and come out again at the next one. Graphics were recyclable fabric with zero PVC, reusable at future events and fully recyclable at eventual end of life. Framing was FSC certified timber. Where printed signage was genuinely needed it was ReBoard, a recycled material that is fully recyclable after the event.
Every supplier was based within 100 miles of the venue, and one, the graphics supplier, was within five miles of it.
A hosted event in a third party venue runs on the venue's rules: access hours, loading restrictions and rigging limits that compress the build into a window the client never sees. The response was to reduce the build to almost nothing that needed building. Rented digital signage instead of printed boards, hired furniture and plants, and graphics designed to be generic enough to reuse. The reason this event came in at 1,153kg is not a clever material. It is that 99% of it was already made and went back afterwards.
Total event carbon of 1,153kg CO2e, on a scope covering embodied carbon of newly created materials, all logistics movements and production facility energy use. Over 99% of production materials by weight were rented. 100% of materials were separable at end of life. Zero waste to landfill, and all rented equipment returned. 100% of suppliers were based within 100 miles of the event and 100% of rented elements were delivered from within 100 miles. All stretch graphics and frames were specified as non-event-specific and go on to be reused. Indicative, calculated in house, not independently audited.
FSC certified timber framing. Recyclable zero PVC fabric graphics, reusable. ReBoard recycled signage. Rented digital signage. Rented live plants. Rented furniture.
Not Your Every Day: UK sustainable furniture rental, providing EU Ecolabel certified furniture. Furniture on the Move: UK event furniture hire. Rocket Graphics: located within five miles of the venue, supplying responsible graphic options and disposing of non-reused materials responsibly. Vista: UK live plant rental. The Event Co: London graphics.
Measurement and reporting by Simon Evans, CEnv ISEP, Sustainability Director. Design lead `[name]`. Project management `[name]`. Photography `[credit]`.