Standardizing Event Sustainability Metrics

There’s no shortage of environmental sustainability guidance for event marketers - including very detailed processes and tools available to anyone who cares about tracking their impact.

But as of September 2025, there’s no broadly accepted standard metrics for event sustainability. The Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition is attempting to rectify that with our latest playbook, now available to EMMC members. In this PDF we explore two key metrics that we’d suggest all event professionals use to evaluate environmental sustainability.

CO2e per participant

The carbon dioxide footprint (and ‘equivalent’ greenhouse gasses) should be calculated for the whole event, including elements like travel and energy usage. The whole footprint should then be divided by the number of participants - this allows events of all sizes to be measured in the same way.

Landfill waste per participant

The total weight of event waste not diverted for recycling and reuse should be calculated for the event, and then divided by the number of participants. As with the above approach, this allows for comparisons across events of all sizes.

Why ‘per participant’?

Per participant allows for a more comprehensive calculation vs. ‘per attendee’. It takes into consideration event staff, suppliers, exhibitors, etc.

Why standardization?

Ultimately, the hope is that these standards will allow the industry to develop benchmarks - averages that event professionals can use to compare their results vs. others. This will allow us all to better understand how we are doing - and hopefully drive continuous improvement efforts.