Afion Sustainability Policy

Looking after the world is important to us, both personally and as an organisation that works across energy, transport, finance and sustainability.

Our mission is to minimise our environmental impact while promoting sustainable practices through the production of our events, our operations and our networks.

We are proud to be a member of ISLA, a non-profit organisation led by event professionals and industry leaders that promotes a sustainable future for events.

PLANNING

Sustainability is at the heart of the planning process for all our events and operations.

We engage with suppliers and stakeholders throughout the planning process to best understand how they can help us deliver more sustainable outcomes.

We set sustainability goals for every event, identifying key areas where we can limit our carbon footprint.

MEASUREMENT

By measuring our carbon emissions, we can track our progress and highlight areas of improvement, both for ourselves and our clients.

We use ISLA’s TRACE platform to track emissions across travel, production, energy, catering and waste management. This helps us to understand our carbon footprint in detail and take targeted action to reduce it.

TRAVEL

We collect data on attendee travel through our registration forms, including mode of transport, distance and class of travel.

This information helps us identify and communicate opportunities for reducing emissions, such as encouraging use of public transport or selecting venues with excellent transport links.

Where appropriate, we align our events with other industry gatherings to help reduce overall travel emissions.

SUPPLIERS

We prioritise suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to sustainable practices. Reducing emissions and environmental impact is a key consideration in our procurement process.

VENUES

We favour venues with strong sustainability credentials and engage closely with venues throughout the production cycle to ensure effective collaboration in reducing emissions.

WASTE & RECYCLING

We aim to limit waste produced by our events as much as possible. Our team does this by:

• Hiring instead of purchasing

• Limiting (and eliminating, where possible) single-use plastics, reducing packaging and choosing recyclable materials
  
  
• Recycling as much waste as possible, and requesting recycling from venues and suppliers
  
  
• Working with catering suppliers to limit food waste and ensure excess food is donated to an identified charity or composted where possible.

CATERING

We work closely with our catering suppliers to develop the most sustainable approach plan for each event.

When choosing menus, our priority is that they are produced with locally sourced ingredients, are culturally sensitive, and feature seasonal produce.

SPONSORS & EXHIBITORS

We collaborate with sponsors and exhibitors to ensure that any agreed giveaways are carefully selected, high-quality and designed to be retained, valued and reused by attendees.

Such items should be produced in responsible quantities to avoid an unusable surplus or waste. We use the ‘suitcase test’: giveaways must be worth taking home and reusing, not throwing away.

OUR OFFICE & OPERATIONS

We regularly review our internal operations and energy use to identify ways to improve our sustainability standards. 

Afion’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2030.

COMMUNICATION

We are committed to being transparent and honest about our sustainability journey. We share our progress, identify areas for improvement and learn from others making similar commitments.

We regularly communicate our progress with suppliers, delegates and other stakeholders in the events sector to promote shared learning and continuous improvement.