An Analysis of Best Practices for Sustainable Events and Venues in Columbus

Course Code: ENR 4567Experience Columbus is seeking ways to make the events and conferences industry of Columbus more sustainable. Events such as conferences, conventions, and other large gatherings are the targeted space behind our research. The City of Columbus has set a progressive goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. With that goal as our guiding principle, this report details ways in which the events industry can help reach that goal and implement sustainable practices. We analyzed three established frameworks of sustainability and used four case study examples to explore the many innovative ways event organizers can host sustainable events and conferences. We also met the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) to gain insight on how their team organizes sustainable events and learn more about their framework of evaluation. Using all of the research and information gathered from in depth literature reviews, we brought together many ideas and practices from the various frameworks and case studies into a synthesized list of six categories of best practices. Our six categories are energy, supply chain, waste reduction, transportation, water usage, and infrastructure. Detailed under each category are what we found to be the most effective ways to reduce the carbon footprint of events and conferences. This paper concludes with our recommendations on how to implement the various best practices described in the report as well as going into detail about the expected limitations and challenges of implementation.Experience ColumbusAcademic Major: Environment, Economy, Development, and Sustainabilit