Medway Council Sustainable Events Training

As part of their commitment to meet their climate and environmental commitments and upskill their team and local event organisers, Medway Council commissioned training for local event organisers on all aspects of events including sustainable events. 

The project was funded by UKSPF Funding and you can see the link here for Medway.

The Council are also developing ‘Green Event’ guidance documents for small and medium and large events which they will be launching over the summer. 

The Council commissions a number of their own events and they were keen to get their own house in order and lead by example, so their events, transport and public health teams were present. 

The Sustainable Sidekicks developed a three-hour training session that considered the key impacts covered in the guide with a focus on smaller community events: 

• Waste minimisation
• Material choices
• Recycling systems
• Energy
• Transport
• Food and drink
• Monitoring and measuring 
• Communications 

After each impact area, their was peer-to-peer learning were the room discussed discussions what was already happening within the council departments and local events. 

There was a focus on how the organisations could engage stakeholders such as traders, local businesses and bring them along on the sustainability journey through: 

• Sustainability questions being built into event registrations 
• Checklists for contributors
• Recommended supplier lists
• Auditing during the event to check people were doing what they committed to.  

The session was rounded up with discussions in groups about the actions and insights and what people would take forward: 

• The transport team reviewing their modes of transport and idling of vehicles at events 
• The festival team working with existing traders on their menus to include more veggie and vegan options as it was difficult to get 100% vegan stalls to attend the public events 
• Trader management asking questions of stallholders to understand their sustainability commitments  
• The Management team committing to monitoring and measuring traders and initiatives at their Christmas event
• Talking to pubs and local venues about their reusable cups that are provide for events

The local grassroots events who attended committed to: 

• Sharing resources with other events 
• Identifying how they could store and share costumes rather than buying cheap low-quality items