Julie Spangler: Founder of Ecosystem Events
Julia Spangler is the Founder of Ecosystem Events, a sustainable event consulting firm specializing in waste diversion and zero waste events. As a consultant and speaker for the meetings & events industry, Julia helps event professionals and organizations reduce the negative environmental footprint of their events in order to protect our planet and deliver powerful sustainability results.
Ecosystem Events offers sustainability training to help you create programs that work for your clients, your staff, and your business. There’s also an online course called How to Plan Zero Waste Event with a choice of three packages which includes options that include a personal consulting support. Ecosystem Events has an assortment of consulting packages for planners who are beginning sustainability, to advanced training and even assistance with getting your event certified.
Thank you for chatting with MUSE today. We’d love to hear how you came to work in sustainability.
In college, I got into fair trade and understanding the reality of the labor situation in global capitalism. I realized that what seemed nice to our consumer eyes wasn't always so nice on the back end. I got into fair trade and the idea of ethical consumerism. And I became educated about environmental issues because they’re often intertwined. This eventually led me to learn about climate change, and understand what a significant hurdle this is for humanity right now.
I was working as a graphic designer in the marketing department of a mid-size company, and part of my job was designing materials for the company’s events. After a few years of putting on these events, it suddenly clicked: the promotional items that we're designing and ordering, all the signage we're printing, a lot of the materials that we're getting for these events are just going to waste, we don't understand if they're recyclable or not. We're just doing things without mindfulness. The food and beverage aspect onsite was totally out of my hands, but I was seeing so much food go to waste. It really blew my mind.
Sustainability was not a part of that company’s culture, but it inspired me to think about other companies’ events. And that's what eventually gave me the idea of starting Ecosystem Events, to help companies plan events more mindfully.
What was it like making that transition? That seems like a really big transition.
I ran the business on the side for two years before I made the leap to going full time. I was fortunate that the MPI World Education Congress was held in my hometown of Indianapolis in 2018. I had the opportunity to help with the waste diversion, and we diverted more than 5,000 pounds of waste from that conference, which was awesome. Through opportunities like that and getting some bigger scale projects, I was able to make the leap to doing this full time.
We believe there’s a lot of value in hiring an event sustainability consultant.
Event planning is stressful enough, and when you're thinking about adding sustainability, it can be overwhelming. As someone who is self taught in the field of sustainability, I did a lot of online research, finding credible sources, immersing myself in months and months of research, and trying to understand things like what does it mean to recycle successfully? How do you compost successfully? What are the things that actually have the most environmental impact? Because they're often not the things that get the most buzz.
I encourage event planners to pursue education in the area of sustainability. But it can be really helpful to have someone alongside you, figuring out what to adopt first, as well as creating a sustainability plan that builds over time. It can be tempting to strive for everything at once, bite off more than you can chew, and not have the resources you need to succeed. A consultant can help understand good first steps, and how you can build on that in subsequent years.
It can be challenging to avoid greenwashing and using buzzwords incorrectly if you don't totally understand what they mean. I help clients accurately and authentically communicate what they are doing, so they're not overstating their efforts, but they're making sure to share all the good things.
When I speak to people who are not super engaged in sustainability, the first thing that comes to their mind is recycling. Like, “we have so much waste so we need to be better at recycling,” when really the better choice is reducing waste, for example, by using reusable dishware and glassware when possible. Minimizing the amount of waste and packaging that gets discarded in the first place, minimizing your printing, designing things to be reused for multiple years. That's really where I encourage planners to focus their sustainability efforts. Plus it tends to save on costs. The less waste you have to deal with means fewer materials you have to try to recover and put to some use.
WEC 2018 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Can we have less at the event, but still offer guests an amazing branded experience that they'll remember forever?
That's something I’ve incorporated into one of my talks: what do you think makes a bigger impact on guests: giving them a branded tchotchke? Or having staff who are familiar with the names and faces of the attendees they want to build relationships with? Having staff who can greet someone and know what company they're from is so much more meaningful than getting a “thing.” Depending on the size of the event, that's not practical to do for every attendee, but you can always have kind, courteous staff, and stay on schedule. There are many things that make an event memorable other than how much stuff you leave with. There’s also a trend toward higher quality promotional items, and requiring some engagement from a lead or prospect before giving them something, which also reduces waste.
What about event sustainability certifications?
The revamped Event Industry Council’s Sustainable Event Standards came out right before the pandemic, so it hasn't had the chance to be fully adopted in what we would consider a normal event scenario. And I know this is something they're continually working on and refining. The first thing that I like to do in terms of any kind of sustainable event certification is direct people to use it as a guideline. Especially if you're not ready to spend the money to pursue certification, first look at what those action items are, and see what it takes to get certified. Look at what you are already doing. What points do you already have built in, and see how far you are from getting certification. That can either be encouraging or discouraging depending on where you are. But it's a good place to start and understand if you're ready to take that leap.
Getting certified is a complex process. I only encourage people to go for it if they're committed to all of the documentation that's necessary. That's also something that's helpful to have a consultant help you with and keep organized for you. Because with so much else going on, all the documentation that's needed for any kind of certification is a lot to wrangle.
Event sustainability is a long-term journey for sure.
Yeah. It is not a thing that you just decide to do and after six months, it's done. It's something that builds on itself. Start with what's attainable and experience some initial success, then keep adding new things. There are many aspects to sustainability; it's actually many separate disciplines. For example, there's energy efficiency, food sustainability, there's understanding issues that have to do with water, understanding greenhouse gas emissions, and how to measure a carbon footprint. And those are all their own kind of nuanced aspects. So trying to cobble all those things together at once can be very overwhelming. Plus, you may need to work with different specialists in different areas. I think one of the valuable things about an organization like MUSE is that it will help build a more tight knit community of professionals who understand all these different areas. So we can all work together, and form a strong team supporting these events.
We hope so too!
I always encourage people to ask their vendors questions, “How can you help us with sustainability?” Some vendors aren't doing that much. But some vendors are like, “Oh, yeah, we can totally do that. We’re just waiting for you to ask.” The Green Meetings Industry Council did a survey a few years back. They found that both vendors and planners were waiting for each other to bring up sustainability. And I feel like that's still the case. Just be willing to be the first person to say, “I want this for my event,” or a vendor can say, “We can do x, y, z for your event.” And I think having more of those conversations will lead to much more progress.
What are some challenges that may come up?
It's easier than people think if you just want to compost food, but composting serviceware can be challenging depending on where you're located. I'm based in Indianapolis, where there is not a huge composting culture. We do have some great service providers, we have some restaurants and caterers who are engaged in that. But it’s complicated navigating what is actually compostable, and understanding what will break down in the facilities that we have. Plus, getting all of the event vendors to purchase the right materials takes a willingness to make it a requirement.
Yes, it’s challenging to get all the service providers at an event to require that they buy from the same vendor (so that it will all get composted or recycled correctly).
There is hesitancy about making it a requirement because a lot of the compostables are more expensive. Especially if a vendor is converting from using something really inexpensive, like styrofoam. Suddenly requiring a certified compostable clamshell can be three or four times more costly per piece, and these vendors have their own profit margins to consider. So we work with events to see if there's ways that we can provide extra value to vendors who are willing to do that. Hopefully, if we get people hooked up with good sources for compostables, they’ll continue to use them. I definitely prefer when we can use china or reusables, but that's a major undertaking for some types of events. Music festivals have done some really cool reusable programs though, so there are models to follow.
There don’t seem to be a lot of commercial composting facilities in the US.
That's another benefit to having a consultant to help you understand the waste infrastructure that's at your disposal. Is there somebody within range for you to even attempt this? Because you would hate to get halfway down the road of trying to compost at your event, and then realize there's nowhere to take it. That’s a nice thing about there being so many different ways to approach sustainability. You know, if you find out that you don't have access to composting, that can shift your focus. You could say “We know that whatever food we have left, we're gonna have to throw away, so how do we make sure that we don't have very much food leftover?” Shift your focus to where you can make an impact with your ordering, and with your portion sizes, and having a donation plan and things like that.
How can we embed an ethical supply chain into our events?
That's something that we try to keep in mind when we're talking about promotional items, awareness of where things are sourced from. I was actually doing research earlier today for a client about sustainable and ethical recommendations for promotional items. And there are some great companies in that space who focus specifically on that.
And embedding Diversity and Inclusion too.
Yes. I was on an event committee last year, and one of the heads of the committee had a sign, you could see it posted in her office behind her desk, it said, “Don't move so fast that you forget about diversity. Don't move so fast that you forget about what's important.” And it is just a constant reminder to slow down and remember that we’re including the whole community in this event.
Can you share a fun anecdote about event sustainability?
Something that I like is when I hire staff to work on site, checking on waste stations, and helping guests recycle in the front of house, they always come back to me during the event and say, “So and so just said that they were so grateful for what we’re doing.” I love hearing the guests thank us for being there. And it’s the only motivation that you need to keep showing up at events to reduce waste and recycle, to collect compost, and everything else. Because people know that it needs to happen. And they’re grateful when they see it. And they feel so much better about being at the event when they see an attempt to handle the waste responsibly. And they like to participate in it. I love hearing that from people who are at events, because it's so much of a confirmation of what we're doing to make the event better.
I love that. And that goes back to your point about adding that personalized touch at events.
And people will remember in a positive way that the event was sustainable, and that the event organizers cared enough about the environment to have a program and to have people there at the stations. They appreciate it, and they think more highly of the brand. It's not a good look to have no sustainability plan. Guests are definitely aware of this, and it matters to more and more people as time goes by.
Website: www.ecosystemevents.com
Twitter: twitter.com/juliaspangler
Instagram: www.instagram.com/juliaspangler
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JuliaSpanglerSustainable