Sustainability at Nordic Business Forum
"We didn't inherit this world from our parents, we merely lease it from our children."
At Nordic Business Forum, we strive to make a positive change in the world. One of the biggest areas where change is needed urgently is humanity’s action towards the environment. We need to focus more on protecting and valuing the planet we live in.
Our Ambition
One of our founding values is cross-generational thinking. This value leads the way we do responsible business, always keeping in mind how our decisions will impact future generations.
Our sustainability vision is to be a North Star for business leaders for better business and better leadership.
Our Priorities
Our events and their content make the world a better place by empowering better leadership and better business
The more business decision makers we can positively impact with our events and our content, the bigger the influence we can have in the world.
While we recognize that organizing an event has a number of direct environmental effects, we also believe that the positive effects beyond the event can be enormous. We organize the events with the ambition of spreading our content and inspiration as widely as possible.
We always think of the environment in any event production related decisions we do
Not only do we wish to be environmentally friendly in our production for the obvious reasons (for leaving behind a healthy planet to the next generations), we also want to inspire others to do the same.
We want to lead by example, and that’s why we take the environmental aspects into account in everything we do.
In our event catering, we only use local and seasonal products. For example, we only offer local fruit and berries. Coffee, tea, and spices are the only exceptions.
We also carefully consider materials used in the event production and assess them for reusability, energy sources used and waste generated during its production, use of ethical labor in production, and CO2 emissions of transportation.
We look for the most environmentally friendly options and prefer options that can be reused next year. If possible, we also rent materials.
We focus on impact, not on looking good.
We don’t want to do environmental acts just to look good but to actually make a difference. Greenwashing can be harmful to the environment, and we do our best to avoid it.
As an example, we only use biodegradable materials if they can be recycled at the scale our event needs.
For example, recycling the biodegradable plastic cups of over 7000+ attendees in two days has not yet been viable as we’ve been told it disturbs the treatment process of biodegradable waste on an industrial scale. Sometimes using “normal” materials is better for the environment.
Our Focuses
In the event production, we focus on protecting the environment by reducing any negative effects caused by our actions and increasing the positive influence we can have. We also focus on sustainability outside of the events in the way we work.
Catering
Whether people come to our event or not, they are likely going to eat that day. We aim to produce food that has a lower environmental footprint than the food people would consume outside of the event on an average day.
We choose locally sourced options wherever possible (coffee, tea, and some spices are exceptions). We hope we can lead by example and inspire our audience and even other events with our catering choices.
Waste
We avoid creating unnecessary waste by avoiding single-use elements. We only do giveaways for cases where we believe that the net effect is positive (for example, notebooks and pens in order to improve learning and actions for positive effects of our event). We are proud of the fact that in 2023 we have gone the extra mile to get rid of bottled spring water and any single-use cups and tableware in our buffet catering.
At the event, 100% of all banners, flags, and signages are reusable (no branding of dates and editions). We push ourselves, our subcontractors, and the venue to go the extra mile in terms of recycling. For example, in 2023 95% of the lanyards used for our event badges are reused from previous years.
We audit the most heavily used materials (such as carpets, notebooks, pens, and lanyards) and look for the most sustainable options. We believe we can lead by example here and inspire the recycling processes of other events to be improved.
Transportation
We promote and utilize public transportation, especially trains, whenever possible. To discourage private transportation to the event, we do not pay for customers’ or employees’ parking.
Our event venue in Helsinki is easily accessible by public transportation. We also discourage the use of private flights for our speakers and customers who travel to us from abroad.
Carbon capture and biodiversity
To reduce our carbon footprint and to help increase carbon capture, we focus on planting trees and protecting forests. We have been making donations to plant at least one tree per Nordic Business Forum attendee each year. To this date our donations have funded the planting of 731,820 trees. We are continuing this initiative.
During the recent years, we have become more and more conscious about the threat of a massive global biodiversity catastrophe. We have decided to take action by starting a forest protection initiative to do our part in preserving and restoring biodiversity.
In 2022, together with our parent company Nordic Business Group, we submitted our first forest protection application to ELY. The plan is to have 34 hectares of biodiverse forest land protected with ELY.
This is the first piece of forest to be protected by our initiative. We hope to continue this action of protecting valuable forest land within Finland in the years to come through active acquisition of forest land and protection of the most biodiverse parts of it.
Diversity and inclusion
We strive to have no one gender overpopulated in our stage agenda and ensure cultural and ethnic diversity in our speakers as well. We also strive for gender balance and cultural diversity within our teams.
Governance
Good governance enhances sustainability. We are committed to good governance through an external board of directors who make the decisions that belong to a board. A company steered by a single CEO or Founder only is at risk of biases in judging what is right and what is wrong.
We promote good governance through the teaching of good leadership that we do.
