Most event footprints are either guesswork or so broad they are meaningless. We measure what you can actually influence, say what we excluded and why, and tell you which five things to change.
Two failures are common. A number so narrow it is flattering: count the materials, ignore the flights, publish a small figure. Or a number so broad it is useless: count everything anyone did in the same city that week and hand the client a figure they cannot act on and would not defend to their own board.
On a fashion week show we measured, the full picture came to 1,604 tonnes CO2e. Press travel alone was 874,500 kg of that, 54.5 percent. We recommended that only emissions from travel the client had actually paid for should sit inside their scope, because their influence over journalists' travel during a week with dozens of competing shows in the same city cannot be quantified.
That took the number to 51 tonnes. We published both figures side by side, with every exclusion listed. The 51 tonnes is the one they could act on. The 1,604 is the one that shows we did not choose 51 because it was small.
We interview the people who make the decisions, not just the sustainability team. On one engagement that meant fourteen named stakeholders, from brand directors to the head of sourcing.
We come to the event. On that assessment it meant three days in Milan: the preparation area at the client's headquarters, the venue during build, the full rehearsal, the live show and partial takedown. You cannot assess a waste system from a spreadsheet. We found bins labelled paper, organic, plastic and general, and almost every one contaminated across streams, which is not something anybody self-reports.
We state every assumption. Travel from country of origin using the capital or largest city. Class rules by haul length. Venue energy pro-rated from monthly usage by time and floor area. Embodied carbon from the Inventory of Carbon and Energy, conversion factors from the UK Government set for the relevant year. All of it in an appendix titled carbon scope, exclusions and assumptions, so an assessor can disagree with a specific choice rather than distrusting the whole number.
A report covering what we visited and reviewed, the full-picture footprint, the recommended-scope footprint, a deep dive on the five highest impact areas, then an assessment across suppliers, venue, production materials, catering, waste, gifting and your event management system. Then the appendix.
The deep dives are where the value is. On that assessment venue energy was 60 percent of the recommended scope. Employee travel booked through the agency was 18.5 percent. Production materials, the thing everyone assumes is the problem, was 9.8 percent.
Sometimes you do not need a number. You need someone to test what you have already built.
A gap analysis looks at five things: where you actually are, whether your own sustainable event guidelines hold up under pressure, whether your own carbon tool has omissions, whether your sustainability team and your events team are in the same conversation, and whether the process works end to end. The middle two are what clients value most. We are not there to sell you our framework, we are there to stress-test yours and tell you where it breaks.
One recent gap analysis found 58 percent of an event's footprint sat in decor, 96 percent of that decor by weight newly purchased or produced, and no end-of-life plan provided by the production partner. Switching to a rented floor system and modular aluminium wall units would have cut decor carbon by over 38 percent, around five tonnes. Average supplier distance was 45.4 km, with two suppliers inside 630 metres of the venue, which was the one thing already being done well.
For a festival retail client we ran an observational assessment and a gap analysis against their own ten-point climate plan, and reported the finding that the impacts of the pop-up shop were not being tracked or measured in any way. There are no results figures because there were no results to measure. Saying so was the deliverable.
For a summit client we found 1,045.65 tonnes CO2e, 97.52 percent of it attendee travel. That is their footprint, not our achievement, and we would not present it as one.
Our Sustainability Director is a Chartered Environmentalist with close to fifteen years in sustainability and sustainable events. He owns the carbon methodology and is the primary source on every materials and credentials question in the business. Every report carries a methodology page in his name. Where a project needs more capacity, he scales through freelancers under his oversight.
We are experienced in delivering projects to ISO 20121 standard in-house, alongside other accredited event management systems. We reference ISO 14001, life cycle assessment, the Inventory of Carbon and Energy, UK Government conversion factors, GRI Standards and Ellen MacArthur Foundation circular economy principles as the engagement needs.
What we hold: certified B Corporation status with a B Impact Score of 93.4 against a threshold of 80 and a median of 50.9, Mission Locked. EcoVadis Gold, score 82, 97th percentile. An emissions reduction target approved by the Science Based Targets initiative in August 2025. All three are verifiable without asking us, and the detail is on our about page.
Red Bull, Versace, Bloomberg, Port of Dover, Hurtigruten and The Co-op. Thirty-one projects are in our case studies.
Measures what the event emits, states which emissions are inside the boundary and why, and identifies what to change. Done properly it includes a site visit during build and live operation, because waste systems and energy use cannot be assessed from a spreadsheet.
No. They are produced with our own methodology, every factor carrying a named source and a date, and we state that on every report. Our corporate reduction target is validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, but that validates the target, not the inventory.
Figures are indicative, produced with our own in-house methodology and not independently audited. Third-party verification can be arranged on any project.
As deep as you want to go, before you commit to anything. No cost, no obligation.
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