As awareness of sustainability grows, traditional event giveaways are declining due to their waste and potential brand damage. Many "sustainable" products lack proof of responsible sourcing, making careful selection crucial for event goodies.
Why it Matters
Two realities to pay attention to
- Giveaways are used less and less at events due to awareness of the issues related to sustainable development. Some giveaways could even have a negative impact on the brand’s image since they are often associated with direct and unnecessary waste.
- More and more suppliers offer so-called "sustainable" and/or "responsible" products. Very often, (fake) labels are shared without documentation or proper proof of sustainable product and sourcing. In the best cases, they ensure that compliance with worker standards is documented, reduce environmental impact, and sometimes simply compensate for the external effects caused by the production and delivery of giveaways. It is however very rare for all the external effects (human and environmental) to be properly integrated into the cost price.
A role to play
Main things to consider if you choose to offer goodies:
- Prevent – choose alternatives to objects and use the budget to something that will surprise your guests > actions, donations, extra activity, …
- Upcycle – many customers have leftovers in their stock from communication campaigns, signage from previous events, and actions… with the proper partner, it can become the best meaningful gift.
- Materials – favor natural materials, without the addition of chemical inputs
- Recyclability – avoid choosing objects with too many materials mixed together, or avoid electronics that are still today not recycled and require a lot of resources to produce.
- Sourcing – local is always better
- Supplier governance – what is his policy, and what are the workers' conditions?
- Quantity – avoid ordering too many – wait to have a good idea of the participants registered or susceptible to come.
- Packaging – get information about your packaging! We’ve seen too many times backstage with a hostess removing single-use plastic for 1000 goodies. This makes no sense.
As My Impact Tool customer, you’ll get access to a full list of solutions to choose wisely the goodies and reduce their impact. We list solutions following the Lansink scale (prevent, reuse, repair, recycle, incinerate), meaning you can adapt depending on the reality of the projects and try to do better for each project.
