Excerpt from CWT
After long periods of isolation, meeting planners and attendees are breathing a sigh of relief as safe, small meetings resume. Without a doubt, the situation remains fluid and restrictions are changing daily as some countries experience second and third waves, and so there remains a sense of caution.
But as we celebrate small victories, could now be a chance to seize the moment? Can companies use the lessons of the pandemic to stop paying lip service to “sustainability” and create events that contribute to a new, more meaningful, healthier and equal society; one that exists in equilibrium with nature? COVID-19 has taught us that we can make big changes fast, that the world is – for better or worse – hyper-connected, and we need gatherings more than we thought.
“While ensuring the safety and wellbeing of attendees is by far the top priority for event planners at the moment, creating more sustainable events still remains high on the agenda,” says Armando Mastrapasqua, CWT Meetings & Events' Senior Director for the Southern EMEA region. “We were able to pivot quickly at the start of the pandemic to new ways of working, and we have been able to develop strategies that help clients achieve both these objectives simultaneously.”
Since 2018, CWT Italy has been one of a small number of companies to achieve the ISO 20121 certification for sustainable events. Recently, it has worked with the certification agency, TÜV Rheinland, to add epidemic/pandemic risk management to its ISO 20121 certification and on 14 October, two events organized by CWT M&E Italy were officially certified as “Sustainable Including Epidemic/Pandemic Risk Management”. We asked the team that organized those events for three ways that planners can boost event sustainability while managing risks associated with the coronavirus at the same time.
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