Whether you’re environmentally conscious or your attendees expect you to reduce your carbon footprint, knowing how to plan a sustainable event is a needed skill in today’s world. With so many things to consider when you organize an event and a limited budget, it might seem like planning a sustainable event is a further complication. Fortunately, there are many simple changes event organizers can make to help their event be more sustainable and make a positive impact.
The Sarasota County Sustainable Event Guide is a resource for those involved in event planning that will help make your event more sustainable. This guide is full of tips and suggestions to make every aspect of your event more sustainable from transportation, venues, and the vendors involved at your event. The Sustainable Event Guide will help reduce the negative impacts and footprint of your event.
We encourage you to take a sustainable, balanced approach and set a goal to take all three sectors of sustainability into consideration when planning your next event. The goal to strive for is to host an event where there is no negative environmental, economic, or social impacts because of your event.
The approaches and practices in this guide apply to a range of events, including conferences, meetings, festivals, sporting events, and more. You will find sustainability tips for several different categories of event planning, like communication, transportation, resource procurement, and others.
What is in the guide? 
Top 10 Best Practices. Planning an event, let alone a sustainable event, can be overwhelming. Do what you can and start with simple solutions.. Begin with the Top 10 Best Practices for a Sustainable Event during the planning process and choose a few that you know you can do. There are some simple and low- cost sustainability measures that can make a difference.
Tips on how to make your event more sustainable include categories like transportation, resource procurement, venue, marketing, and registration, and more. These guidelines will help you reduce waste, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and conserve and protect resources.
We’ve highlighted 10 Case Studies from local organizations, businesses, and municipalities that have hosted sustainable events. They have shared their best practices, lessons learned, and advice on how to have a sustainable event.
If you are a Sarasota County employee, there is a separate Sarasota County Sustainable Event Guide that expands upon the information provided in the Sustainable Event Guide. There are resources that relate to county events and resources that are available specifically to county employees. Please Contact sustainablesarasota@scgov.net or call 941-861-9874 to receive a copy of the county guide.
Survey
Let us know which strategies you implemented and impacts of your sustainable event by completing our Sustainable Event Guide Survey. Event organizers that complete this short survey may be recognized for their efforts in hosting a sustainable event in the Sarasota County Sustainability newsletter, blog, and/or social media. You could also be recognized on our Sustainable Events webpage. We acknowledge that planning an event can be challenging and complicated, and factoring in sustainable practices can seem difficult. This survey will help recognize your efforts to reduce the negative environmental, social, and economic impact of events in our region.
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