MICEBOOK - POWER 50 GREEN CHAMPIONS COVER 1 - Flipbook - Page 4
Page 4
Aaron McGurk
Alex Softley
Anastasia Kireeva
Operations Manager, Chorus
Portfolio Marketing Director, North
Star Travel Group
Sustainability Coordinator, Marble
LDN
After immersing himself in sessions
focused on sustainability and positive
impact, Alex was inspired to act and lead
the charge for not only The Meetings Show
but its parent company Northstar Travel
Group UK to adopt and implement a
comprehensive sustainability strategy.
In September 2022, Anastasia joined
Marble LDN as a Sustainability
Coordinator. Within her first 8 months, she
implemented event sustainability and
carbon emissions reporting to clients, built
a database of sustainable suppliers,
helped the company start its B Corp
journey and organised an Earth Day
Clothes Swap event for the local
community working alongside the
business at Great Western Studios.
Aarron joined Chorus as a part time
executive assistant at the very beginning
of the agency’s journey and has played a
key role in shaping the business, working
his way up to become full time
Operations Manager. Sustainability is
something close to Aarron’s heart and its
part of his remit to keep it at the front
and centre of Chorus’ growth.
He has been instrumental in supporting
the delivery teams in engaging with
sustainability, starting with awareness
and training, and supported with
embedding sustainability through all
Chorus’ systems and processes. Aarron
has built a strong relationship with isla,
leveraging the sustainability body’s
expert training modules to ensure the
whole team complete them, and
onboarding new team members,
freelancers, and supply partners onto
TRACE, isla’s carbon tracking tool, to
ensure everyone is using it effectively.
One of Aarron’s key deliverables was to
develop Chorus’ sustainability policy
which sets out internal targets,
measuring performance, and setting
benchmarks. Since this was launched in
2022, Aarron has developed a document
that outlines the agency’s approach to
sustainable events, covering all parts of
event design and production, which he is
already planning to evolve to highlight
people and culture, especially around
DE&I. Aarron has also been instrumental
in developing a new sustainable
procurement policy.
With Aarron’s support, Chorus has been
able to track over 500 tonnes of carbon
emissions over 21 events, influence clients
to make positive change using data and
case studies, and track nearly 300,000
event attendees’ emissions. Internally
through partnership with Carbon
Footprint Aarron has made great
progress in reducing the agency’s
carbon emissions year on year and for
his efforts, Chorus currently holds the
licensed certificate for ‘Carbon Reduced’
and ‘Carbon Neutral’.
He actively shares his learnings, speaking
at many industry events and recently
chaired a session at the launch of Isla's
Temperature Check Report.
Determined to effect positive change
within the industry, Alex conceptualised a
six-week CPD-accredited virtual course
that would empower busy event
professionals to become experts in
sustainable event management at their
own pace.
As fate would have it, he had recently
booked Andy King as a keynote speaker
for The Meetings Show 2021. Andy had shot
to fame thanks to Netflix’s documentary in
2019 about the infamous Fyre Festival, but
little was known about his passion for
taking a sustainable approach to event
planning. Recognising the value of his
experience, Alex approached Andy and
invited him to contribute to the course
concept.
With the help of Northstar’s commercial
director Ross Barker, Alex also
successfully enlisted isla’s CEO Anna
Abdelnoor, whose expertise greatly
enhanced the course's legitimacy.
Launched in September 2021, the results of
The Complete Sustainable Events Course
so far have been impressive. With two
cohorts having already completed the
course, The Meetings Show has
successfully educated and empowered
over 200 students and received
overwhelmingly positive feedback with a
fantastic Net Promoter Score of +43.
Alex has also championed sustainability
across Northstar in the UK, ensuring that its
commitment to sustainable practices
extends beyond the course itself. Isla has
since become a strategic partner of The
Meetings Show, supporting the
development of its sustainability strategy,
and Alex is working closely with the events
and operations team in setting clear goals
for continuous improvement year after
year, to help the group achieve its pledge
to reach Net Zero by 2050 and cut carbon
emissions by 50% by 2030.
Although the agency already ran an Event
Sustainability Action Plan (ESAP) on every
project, which assesses sustainability
performance based on choices made in
the event planning and delivery, there was
no ESAP reporting system established for
clients and the Action Plan did not include
carbon footprint measurements so it was
not clear how Net Zero targets could be
achieved.
Anastasia created and implemented a
report template that Marble LDN now uses
to demonstrate event sustainability rating
to the clients and implemented isla’s
TRACE platform to track event carbon
emissions, assess where reductions could
be achieved and to report the results
internally and to clients. In 2022, seven
ESAP reports were sent to clients (out of 12
projects that ran from September 2022)
and this year she is aiming to report event
sustainability, including carbon
measurements, across 100% of projects.
She has also assessed the agency’s
supplier database on sustainability
performance, labelling them as “green”,
“amber” or “red”, with recommendations
to those that are labelled amber or red to
help them increase their score. The
agency now has a list of 57 “green” and
“amber” suppliers.
Anastasia has developed an internal
Office Sustainability Policy that provides
guidance on how to recycle and handle
waste and reduce energy consumption,
and together with the HR & Operations
Manager, she has set up a plan to prepare
the team for B Corp application by the
end of 2023.