The event industry has a big part to play in fighting climate change, reducing waste and decarbonising the economy. It is a complex sector as it involves many actors, including producers, suppliers, venues and of course consumers. Balancing all of these stakeholders only makes working in this creative industry more interesting.

Anastasia Kireeva recently joined Marble in a brand new role for our agency – Events Sustainability Assistant. Anastasia’s role includes assessing and engaging sustainable suppliers and venues to help us deliver our sustainability ambitions, reporting ESAP ratings to clients during the project lifecycle from start to finish, and working alongside our project and production managers to run our Event Sustainability Action Plan just to name a few. By having a member of the team solely dedicated to driving our sustainability goals, we are ensuring we stay accountable for our environmental ambitions and ISO accreditation objectives.

We sat down with Anastasia to gain a better understanding of her background and passion for sustainability and what she plans to achieve in this impactful role.

Through my travels and, in particular, my experience of living in South-East Asia, I became more and more concerned with the environmental issues that we are facing today. Water and air pollution as well as weather extremes, such as increased precipitation, heat waves and flooding, are quite evident and pronounced in Vietnam where I spent two life-changing years before embarking on my sustainability journey. After having witnessed these issues, I wanted to make a difference and started looking into climate change and pollution and what can be done to combat them. I realised I wanted to dedicate my career to it. Now I’m here, this career choice feels “right” and meaningful to me personally, and this drives me to wanting to succeed in this field.

When I first decided to pursue this path, I started with an online course, some reading and volunteering. But it didn’t seem enough for me to be able to transition to a new profession, so I did a master’s degree in Environmental Management here in London. This MSc program is certified by IEMA – the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment which is a large alliance of sustainability practitioners in the United Kingdom and globally that provides resources, tools, knowledge and research sharing to meet the real-world needs of its members. By the end of this year, I am planning to upgrade my Student IEMA membership to Practitioner level so I can continue expanding my sustainability knowledge, skills and network.

The UK committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 in order to help limit global warming to 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial levels, but the government cannot reach this target on its own. Organisations have a major role in the shift to a green economy, and some say that in 28 years every business will have no choice but to be a sustainable business. However, implementing sustainability requires resources, hence, having dedicated professionals is essential for firms to achieve their environmental targets and support the country’s Clean Growth strategy.

In addition to the areas that our Team Green are working on, I would like to achieve the following in my first few months at Marble: 

1. Find the most effective way to report event sustainability performance to our clients and help them improve where needed
2. Build a database of sustainable suppliers, venues and partners
3. Bring in new ideas for environmental innovation and implement these

I strongly believe that in the very near future every event will have to be run sustainably, which will require thorough planning, research and collaboration. Therefore, my main ambition for our agency is to become the go-to agency for any client that wants to organise an event with minimum environmental impact and state-of-the-art innovation. 

To read more about the work we’re doing to become a more sustainable agency, see our ISO accreditations here, an introduction to Team Green, and our recent Marbled Thoughts blog on greenwashing.

To hear more about our sustainability practices and discuss your next project, chat to one of the Marble team.