“It’s not a priority.” When it comes to event sustainability, this usually means something more specific: no one has explicitly asked for it yet, so it hasn’t earned your time. Client procurement has already moved past that point. Event sustainability requirements are turning up in RFPs at a rate that makes “no one’s asked” a shrinking excuse, and ignoring it now carries its own risk: lost pitches, and exclusion from client frameworks that expect the data as standard.
This is the reality behind the excuse
Around 62% of RFPs now include sustainability requirements, and many large clients have to collect this information for their own reporting regardless of whether the event supplier volunteers it. People are already asking and it’s happening during procurement rather than a direct conversation about event sustainability.
Treating sustainability as optional under these conditions puts an organisation at a disadvantage against competitors who can already answer the RFP questions with real collected data – a general policy statement doesn’t hold up in comparison.
What this looks like in practice
Testing whether sustainability is really “not a priority” for your clients is a quick exercise:
- Audit your last five to ten RFPs. Count how many included a sustainability or carbon question. This replaces an assumption with an actual number specific to your client base.
- Build a standard answer, once. A pre-prepared response backed by measurement, data and any relevant documents can be reused and adapted ready to include in future RFPs.
- Track what you lose, not just what you win. Pitches lost to sustainability gaps rarely get logged as such. Asking the question directly with unsuccessful clients closes that blind spot.
- Watch which of your clients are legally required to report. Larger clients increasingly have their own Scope 3 obligations, which means your event data, general operating emissions and policy becomes part of their compliance picture whether or not they’ve said so explicitly.
The business case for taking it seriously
Motivation data from the Temperature Check Europe 2025 report shows brand reputation (71%) and consumer or customer demand (52%) as leading drivers for improving sustainability performance, ahead of regulatory compliance.
Regulation is still accelerating this shift: organisations legally required to report on sustainability are twice as likely to measure their full carbon footprint across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, and twice as likely to have set carbon reduction targets. Only 17% of respondents from our survey are currently under a legal reporting requirement, but that figure is expected to rise as UK and EU legislation extends further down supply chains.
Acting before that requirement lands puts an organisation ahead of the compliance curve. The practical next step is the RFP audit above: a concrete, current answer to whether this is genuinely optional for your business.
TRACE’s 2026 Event Sustainability Checklist sets out a three-step measurement blueprint for exactly this starting point. Get the checklist to see where your organisation sits.
