April 23, 2026
We’re Marking Earth Day by Turning Sustainability Into Action
As event specialists, we marked Earth Day on 22nd April by dedicating time, people, and resources to initiatives that support both our local communities and our long-term sustainability goals.
We’re an employee-owned business, and we’ve set a clear ambition: to play a leading role in driving sustainability across the events industry — and to actively encourage fellow operators to work with us in setting new industry standards by 2030.
Volunteering across our local communities
This Earth Day, 65 of our team members stepped away from day-to-day delivery to support a wide range of community-focused initiatives, including:
Our Earth Day activity included:
- Cleaning up local streets with Litter Pick Leeds
- Refreshing Bradford North Food Bank using repurposed paints from Leeds-based social enterprise Seagulls
- Bucket collecting for Bradford Neonatal Unit
These activities are part of a wider commitment we’re building to ensure our impact goes beyond events, supporting the communities we work within every day.
Embedding sustainability into how we operate
We’re actively shifting sustainability from a standalone initiative to a core part of how we measure success — alongside performance areas like profit, growth, and employee satisfaction.
As part of this, we’ve introduced structured sustainability practices across the organisation, ensuring they’re embedded into our operations rather than treated as an add-on.
Carbon literacy & ESG commitments
A key driver of this shift has been our rollout of mandatory two-day Carbon Literacy Training from The Carbon Literacy Project across the entire business.
We are now a recognised Carbon Literate organisation, and we’ve also:
- Conducted our own carbon report
- Revised our ESG policy
- Embedded a structured sustainability strategy into day-to-day operations
Where possible, we also ensure our volunteering activity focuses on carbon reduction, education and environmental impact.
Measuring impact with event:decision
We’ve also partnered with leading sustainability and responsibility data provider event:decision to assess the impact of our events across:
- Environmental responsibility
- Social value
- Governance
This allows us to benchmark performance over time, track progress, and make more informed decisions that support transparency and accountability.
With international events carrying an unavoidable environmental footprint, we’re committed to using data to reduce our impact year on year — and we’re already working towards ensuring next year’s reporting shows a meaningful reduction in our carbon footprint.
Industry perspective on responsible events
Matt Grey from event:decision said:
“First Event’s engagement shows how agencies can use data and insight to drive better outcomes for clients. Responsible events are not about ticking boxes – they’re about making informed choices that align delivery with purpose, quality, and long-term value.”
Our Commitment to leading industry change
We know that real change can’t happen in isolation.
While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, we also recognise that improving sustainability across the events industry requires collective action. That’s why we’re actively calling on other organisers and suppliers to adopt, refine, and evolve their own sustainability strategies.
Our ambition is not just to improve our own impact, but to help shape industry-wide standards that reduce environmental harm at scale.
Our commitment is every day
Our Head of Tech & Innovation and ESG Lead, Max, said:
“While Earth Day is just one day each year, we know we need to act each and every day. Sustainability has to be embedded in how we operate, not added on. From volunteering in our communities to strengthening our carbon reporting and ESG strategy, we’re taking real, measurable action. We’re proud of the progress so far, but this is bigger than us. We’re calling on the events industry to step up, collaborate, and commit to meaningful, measurable change.”
Explore how we’re building sustainability into everything we do at First Event:
