How to address event environmental sustainability: a supply network perspective

Event management is not out of the debate about environmental sustainability. Indeed, it intrinsically generates an impact on host destinations through the increase of emissions and other ecological pressures. So far literature has mainly focused on the perspective of event organizers, adopting a mere event provider’s view, and most of the papers report only anecdotal single event case-studies. In our research we propose an innovative methodology to address event environmental sustainability within a supply network perspective. The research is based on a collaboration carried out with the municipality of a large European city, aimed at providing the city with effective management tools to reduce public events environmental footprint. Embracing a supply network perspective, the municipality tries to enhance the sustainability of events staged in its territory in an end-to-end view, leveraging the multiple roles it can play in the supply network (often simultaneously): organizer, partner, sponsor, material supplier and regulator. The proposed methodology consists of the following phases: environmental assessment of different events held in the city, identification of ecological hotspots, definition of improvement strategies, and elaboration of ad-hoc regulations, containing sets of criteria/actions/practices required for the sustainable management of events, either organized, sponsored or authorized by the municipality.