Post-Event Review
Review & Impact:
After the culmination of your successful event, it is important to review every aspect of the event – what worked, and what didn’t. Gathering data, assessing your successes and looking for areas of improvement are key steps to take to ensure the future success and increased sustainability of your next event(s). In the following section, we break down each step for assessment, with hints and tips on how to improve future events.
Event Debrief – What Worked & What Didn’t?
Review the following categories with your team
Food & Beverage: Assess which vendors were most sustainable and profitable, how suitable bin placement affected waste management, and what was lacking in your sustainability plan – these are all areas where data gathering can assist you to improve your future events.
Vendors: Did the vendors involved work well within your sustainability goals? Did they manage to adhere to your sustainable event guidelines? If not, where are areas to improve, or are there alternate vendors you would like to work with in the future?
Waste Management: Review waste sorting and collection success with your waste hauler – did diversion strategies work? If there was a Green Team, was it successful? Any feedback from the team?
Improving waste diversion can save your event money! You can recover money back from selling recyclable materials such as aluminium and cardboard.
Reusable Programs (if relevant): How effective were these? Did they block efficiency or guest experience in any way? What are key learnings to improve operations next year?
Measuring Impact:
Use your event as an opportunity to gather data on the successes and challenges you faced organising and running the event – this will allow you to make informed decisions when running future events, allowing you to improve in certain areas and make the necessary adaptations to save money, increase sustainability and to create a better experience for everyone involved.
Sustainability Goals – Overall Performance: What were the initial goals you set when planning your event, and were they met? If not, what areas are there for improvement? Which goals were met and how?
What are the key indicators your team is using to measure success? What were your main successes, and how did you measure them? What percentage of your waste stream was diverted from landfill for example? What were event attendee satisfaction rates? Are you able to compare them to previous events?
How was compliance measured? What actions did you take to ensure compliance with your sustainability goals?
Constructive indicators include, but are not limited to:
Waste diversion rate from landfill
Contamination rates of waste streams
Surveys on overall guest experience as well as guest feedback and/or complaints
Vendor compliance with sustainability guidelines
Planning Future Events:
Use this review, your data gathered, and feedback from your team / partners / vendors / sponsors to identify opportunities for improvement. Whether this is a regularly occurring event, or if you can apply these learnings to other events, reflection and review is a key part of growth and evolution. Use your newly gathered data to make comparisons and see where you can improve!
The key to achieving sustainable operations is planning and organization.