Posted by

Barry Siskind

UFI’s Community Manager

On March 11, UFI’s Sustainable Development Focus Meeting will be held in Hong Kong.

UFI’s  Secretary of the UFI Sustainable Development Committee, Christian Druart states, “Successfully implementing sustainability requires time and patience! Ideally it starts with an in-depth analysis of the relevant issues and involves measuring results.  The pay-back sometimes takes time.”

I asked him to list some examples of successful sustainable programmes and activities in the exhibition sector. Here’s what he said:

“Several companies have reached remarkable results over the last few years.  Just take a look at the the programmes of the finalists of our annual UFI award competition whose entries are available at www.ufi.org/sdaward:

Sustainable development strategy : Amsterdam RAI (Netherlands), ARTEXIS (Belgium), CTICC (South Africa), Palexpo (Switzerland) and UBM Live Amsterdam (Netherlands);

Innovative environmental initiative Fira Barcelona (Spain), Freeman (USA), Fresh Montgomery (UK) and Scan Display (South Africa);

Reporting on sustainability: CTICC (South Africa) and La Rural Buenos Aires (Argentina);

Measurement tool for effective results: EICC (UK), Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre (Singapore) and Sustainable Events (UK).

“Another key area is the commitment to ISO 20121, the international standard for sustainability in event management. This standard was released in 2012 and we now notice a growing uptake in the industry, for example:

Fresh Montgomery (UK) in 2012,

UBM Live (Netherlands), Plaza Athénée Bangkok (Thailand), Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre (Singapore), International Paris Air Show (France) in 2013

Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre (Thailand), Kingsmen CMTI (Thailand), VIPARIS (France) and TAITRA (Taiwan) in 2014.”

The theme of this UFI Focus Meeting is “Winning strategies for sustainability in the event industry: let’s work together!” and the full programme and registration are available at www.ufi.org/hk2015sd.