In 2023, Green Circle Solutions was tasked with helping identify and calculate the emissions for one of Clarion’s flagship events and advise on how to reduce the overall carbon footprint.
Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) is a biennial defence and security trade exhibition which serves as a forum between international governments, Ministries of Defence, and military officials. Attracting over 1700 exhibitors from 58 countries, the international hybrid event took place at ExCeL London in September 2023.
“One of the primary stakeholders in DSEI was The Ministry of Defence (MOD), and, being a UK governmental body, they have several reporting requirements including carbon foot printing” explained Ellen.
Clarion needed a partner to support them and chose GCS due to the team’s extensive experience in the events industry and its knowledge of stand building and materials. The challenge was to help measure and calculate the total event emissions, improve data gathering and produce a gap analysis.
Of course, Clarion as a business has carbon emissions directly attributable to their actions, but the DSEI case study involved a mix of stakeholders and moving parts. Said Ellen: “GCS attended the event, acting as an auditor, interviewing multiple suppliers to capture all their emissions data. The sustainability audit collected data around energy consumption, waste generation, staff and attendee travel, production materials and stand building, as well as logistics.”
Calculating the carbon footprint of the entire event was a highly complex undertaking and the first iteration could not truly encompass all aspects nor be fully driven by accurate data. However, in line with widely acknowledged carbon calculation best practice, the team was committed to making a start and to establish context, rather than not starting at all, she explained.
“The plan is that as better data and clearer methodology evolves in future calculations, we will revisit and update earlier iterations as appropriate,” Ellen added.
The GCS team was able to swiftly condense all the data gathered through its bespoke event carbon calculation tools into a report and presented back to the team at Clarion with recommendations and best practices as to how to reduce emissions for the next DSEI in September 2025.
As expected, visitor travel was the largest contributor to the overall event footprint, with stand building the second.
Exercising any kind of change over the visitor travel is, of course, very challenging. However, as the portion of exhibitor travel is significant, Clarion may have an opportunity to influence this element. Enhanced engagement with exhibitors and stand builders via a Sustainability Plan was recommended to set much higher expectations along with several other measures.
Meanwhile, Clarion has already made much progress on its broader sustainability journey, having published its companywide sustainability policy in 2023 and most recently its Sustainability Report for FY24 [2023] which discloses its key material topics and what action is being taken.
“Fortunately, I have a very engaged board who began the journey by signing The Net Zero Carbon Events Pledge, and we have set Net Zero targets to reduce our emissions by 50% by 2030 and to achieve Net Zero by 2045.”
Next steps include engaging further with their supply chain and publishing a new procurement policy. Ellen explained that Clarion has already begun integrating sustainability questions into its supplier selection process and established an internal scoring framework.
“We are focusing on building carbon literacy and confidence amongst staff. Building a network of sustainability champions who are employee volunteers from a variety of departments, is key in further embedding our ESG strategy.” she explained.
So, what’s next for Clarion?
“We were pleased with the quality of the report on DSEI which now provides a baseline from which to reduce emissions,” said Ellen. “And, based on all the learnings and best practices we have adopted, we are confident that we will continue to be able to reduce the emissions of this important event, with support from our suppliers and GCS,” said Ellen.
“In future, we would love to be able to service our customers with a carbon footprint of exhibiting at our event, so they can use our shows to exhibit more sustainably, and track their progress year on year,” she concluded.
