Making events more sustainable
Brighton & Hove is famous for its exciting, inclusive and family-friendly event programme and 2025 looks to be one of the best years yet.
From festivals to sports, events bring huge benefits to the city and its residents, boosting the economy and attracting thousands of visitors – but they can also have a significant impact on the city environment. As part of agreeing the events programme for 2025, we’ve taken the opportunity to see if we can go further to reduce this impact.
When considering granting permission for events, council officers identify and assess any potential negative effects, and work with organisers to minimise any harm to the city and its residents. This includes requiring detailed Environmental Impact Assessment and action plans.
But this year the council is going a step further and asking event organisers to sign up to a new, more ambitious Sustainable Event Commitment.
Councillor Tim Rowkins, Cabinet member for Net Zero & Environmental Services, has been working in partnership with Leave No Trace Brighton and Green Runners to review the Sustainable Events Programme and find ways to improve it.
He said: “I’m delighted that we are going the extra mile and setting the bar even higher to improve sustainability at events in the city.
“This ambitious programme will not only help to protect the city environment and local economy, but also demonstrate best practice and lead the way for other major cities looking to improve sustainability at events.”
By signing up to the Sustainable Event Commitment, event organisers will agree to take actions that improve sustainability.
These actions cover energy and water, travel and transportation, waste and recycling, food and drink, suppliers and products and community, landscape, health and culture.
Councillor Rowkins added: “We already have robust recycling targets for event organisers, but this new programme has a much bigger focus on reuse, refills and composting food waste.
“Recycling is all well and good, but of course we really want to be producing less waste in the first place.”
As part of the commitment, caterers will be encouraged to apply a surcharge for single use items like coffee cups, and to provide water refill stations to cut down on plastics and other single-use items. Outdoor event organisers will be urged to use fixed electricity outlets rather than diesel generators, and the council has embarked on a programme of installing outlets at the city’s event locations.
Councillor Rowkins said: “By making this commitment, event organisers can publicly show they have taken a range of actions to manage their event in a responsible way, choosing products and services that have a positive local economic, environmental and social impact.
“Some of the actions are also likely to save them money.
“In addition to the more ambitious sustainability requirements, we have also adopted a new approach to ensure any remedial action required after events is taken swiftly, with the costs covered by event organisers.
“I’d like to thank Leave No Trace Brighton and the Green Runners for their support in making these changes. I’m looking forward to our continued improvement, our programme and most of all I look forward to attending some of the brilliant events in the city this year!”
Coral Evans, Campaign Manager at Leave No Trace Brighton said: “Leave No Trace Brighton is delighted to have contributed to the enhancement of the Sustainable Events Commitment and programme.
“Collaborating with councillors, officers and the Green Runners has been a fantastic experience, enabling us to help set meaningful, ambitious, waste-reducing sustainability standards for our great city.”