For CODA, sustainability is the one of the important from our 4 C’s for success.
We see it is our responsibility to address the impact events have on the climate and our planet. We recently wrote about being Clean – one our core values, which you can read here:
Making the world a better place – one event at a time
We want to help our clients achieve their carbon reduction goals. Just as importantly we are a community-minded business and we care deeply about the cities and towns we operate within along with the customers we serve and suppliers we use to help achieve our goals.
We wanted to share a few areas where we have changed our focus to where the business needs us most.
Being an agile business, allows us to put sustainability plans into action quickly.
Carbon Impact
At CODA we see it as a major responsibility of ours to help reduce the carbon impact of live events by:
- using energy efficient lighting
- designing LED backdrops to change the meeting environment rather than using timber built staging solutions,
- using local suppliers to reduce transportation of equipment
- having a full time presence in all strategically important pharma hubs around the world is our goal
- we have a CODA hub already operational in Europe to offer virtual solutions to run alongside the ‘in person’ event
- adopt a paper-free approach
Virtual and hybrid events
Virtual events are a great option for organisations who want to minimise their carbon footprint. When we consider the impact that transportation, hotel and accommodation energy, food production and venue energy has on the environment in terms of carbon emissions, running a virtual event shows a significant decrease in carbon emissions significantly.
We’re aware that not all events can be totally virtual so where possible we introduce a hybrid solution. Having a portion of our clients audience joining virtually will naturally decrease an event’s carbon footprint as well as extending the global reach of the event
European Office
Our Portugal base gives us an advantage because we can use staff and crew abroad and use the most sustainable mode of transport to save on emissions from flights.
You can read more about the benefits our Portugal hub has for us and the environment here: Portugal Hub
Ethics
We are a community-minded business and we care deeply about the cities and towns we operate within and the customers that we serve, along with the suppliers and freelancers we use to help achieve our goals.
For us – being ethical goes beyond filling in forms or politesse. We believe actions speak louder than words.
One example of this, we support the ‘Homeless Project Manchester’. Our efforts go beyond gifting money, our Directors go out on the streets of Manchester to provide any assistance they can and provide basic human contact, something that is sadly missing for a homeless person.
Web Sustainability
Our own website produces 0.86g CO2 per visit. Applying the same figures as above that means 102.93kg CO2 a year. To put that into perspective it would take 5 trees to reabsorb that amount in a year, or you could drive an electric car 1,179km. (www.websitecarbon.com)
As a company we are now looking at how we can reduce this sort of impact. We are able to make simple changes such as reducing the number of images and videos, keeping fonts simple. We also are aiming to optimise the website for SEO meaning that the less time a user spends searching for our company info the less energy will be used. We already use sustainable energy in running the website but are now looking at green web hosting companies to continue to drive down those high numbers.
Measuring sustainability
To ensure the changes we’re making have a positive impact on the planet, we are continually measuring what we do. By being members of ISLA, we can see reports on our events based activities.
We ensure 0% of our waste goes to landfill including any of our IT infrastructure. We work in an office environment that is ‘best in class’ for working hard and achieving CO2 emissions.
Bottom Line
We are members of EcoVadis and TRACE and we aim to put the sustainability of meetings and events at the top of our agenda.
At CODA we see it as a major responsibility of ours to help reduce the carbon impact of live events across the whole supply chain, from design, to waste management.
We’re here to make a difference and we want to do this in an honest, open and transparent manner. Our actions to date are just a start, follow us on our journey as we pave the way for the events industry to be more sustainable and do more for our planet.
