Hosting Green Events artwork
Transforming Tomorrow

Hosting Green Events

  • S2E22
  • 28:01
  • March 10th 2025

Can a big in-person event be sustainable? Or do all events need to move online? Do you spend your time at parties wondering how sustainable it is – and how it could be better?

Hilary Barraclough oversees events organisation across Lancaster University, and she and her team try to make them as sustainable as possible.

From promoting sustainable travel to and from venues, to ensuring lower levels of food waste from catering – and increasing the amount of vegan and vegetarian food being served, and cutting down on needless packaging, there are many ways to make a difference.

Discover the challenges posed by cling film, the importance of educating and training events staff, how sustainability sits in importance for agencies organising events, an innovative milk packaging solution, and a whole new accreditation system to delight Paul.

Does Jan’s sustainability obsession make as boring as she sounds at parties? And why is Paul cursing Warwick?

Discover more about the wildlife walks Hilary mentions here: https://wildlifewalk.co.uk/

Episode Transcript

Transforming Tomorrow

Sustainability is a key consideration for any contemporary business, from biodiversity to modern slavery, seabeds to factory floors. On Transforming Tomorrow, we’ll guide you through the complex, ever-changing and often exciting (yes, really!!) world of sustainability in business. Alongside members of the Pentland Centre, academic experts, and business leaders, we cover the theory and practice of mainstreaming social and environmental sustainability into purposeful business strategy and performance.

Whether you are leading change in your business, or just want to know more about how asteroid mining may influence the future of sustainability, Transforming Tomorrow is the show for you.

Taking you through it all are your hosts, Jan and Paul, who bring insight, perspective, and not a little amount of disagreement, to all the subjects.

Join us every Monday to uncover new insights and become a little more inspired that you can make a difference in sustainability.

You can find transcripts for most episodes at: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/resources-for-education-and-practice/transforming-tomorrow-podcast/transcripts/

Send your questions on any of the issues we discuss in Transforming Tomorrow to [email protected] or fill in our feedback form here: https://forms.office.com/e/7Bw4rDiRDt

Find out more about the Pentland Centre and its work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/

https://doc.your-brochure-online.co.uk/Lancaster-University_Transforming-Tomorrow/

Meet the Hosts

Jan Bebbington avatar
Jan Bebbington
Co-Host

Professor Jan Bebbington is the Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University. Jan is an expert on accounting, benchmarking (to her co-host’s annoyance), and how business and sustainability intersect.

Jan loves nature and wants to protect it – and hopes she can change the world (ideally for the better). She is also motivated to address inequality wherever it is found and especially to eliminate forced, bonded or child labour. Transforming Tomorrow is one small step on that quest.

Paul Turner avatar
Paul Turner
Co-Host

Paul Turner is a former sports journalist who now works promoting the research activities in Lancaster University Management School – a poacher turned gamekeeper as his former colleagues would have it.

Paul has always been interested in nature and the natural environment – it comes from growing up in Cumbria – and has been a vocal proponent of the work of the Pentland Centre since joining Lancaster University. He does not like rankings and benchmarking, and is not afraid to say so.