Imagine a truly circular venue…
How crowdsourcing can pave the way for a circular events industry: results & next steps from The Circular Events Challenge
Imagine a truly circular venue…
- Where all organic waste is repurposed into energy to power the building or into fertilisers to grow the food served at the venue’s restaurants
- Where all containers, cups, and cutlery are plastic-free, reusable, and/or biodegradable
- Where exhibition stands and products supplied are made out of circular materials
- Where even toilets do their part by harnessing nutrients from the urine generated throughout the building
- Where technology empowers venue managers, suppliers, and attendees to make smarter choices
- Where a consortium of industry stakeholders is working towards developing industry standards for circular events
- Where a pool of event resources — from signage and high-visibility jackets to audiovisual equipment — are shared with other businesses around the city
- And where “circular behaviour” — from choosing low-carbon transport to returning cups and containers — are encouraged and rewarded with a local currency.
This is the vision that came out of The Circular Events Challenge: a 4-week-long online crowdsourcing effort to collectively imagine how the circular economy can drive positive change in the events industry, and specifically across event venues and conference and exhibition halls.
The challenge brought together over 200 contributions from over 60 people hailing from 13 different countries. Another 1000+ of you were following the challenge online; chipping in on social media; reaching out to us personally before and throughout the challenge… and we’d like to sincerely thank everyone of you.
But dreaming up a circular world isn’t quite enough, is it?
This is where things start to get really exciting.
Over the next week, we’ll be working together with Circular Glasgow, an initiative of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and the judging panel to identify which of the solutions should be incubated and further explored.
Once we’ve announced the solutions selected (by early May), we’ll be reaching out to both the Circle Lab and the local Glasgow communities to find the right people and skills to bring the solutions to life!
Missed the ideation phase but interested in helping to incubate the solutions? Shoot us a message at hello@circle-lab.com or sign up for the Circle Lab newsletter to stay up to date on ways to get involved!
