Letting Data Lead the Way on Qlik Event Sustainability Efforts

As we returned to live events this year during our worldwide QlikWorld tour from June through November, Qlik’s leadership focused on putting the same data sustainability strategies we have designed with leaders like the United Nations and C40 Cities into action ourselves.

Our Qlik Sustainability team partnered with Qlik Marketing to plan a series of events that incorporated consistent sustainability efforts to achieve a carbon neutral tour. The dimensions we measured included both travel (distance travelled on road, % utilizing public transportation, # attendees travelling by air and also hotel stays) and also areas like single use plastic, paper, wearables/merchandise, furnishings and catering for ongoing reporting and improvement efforts.

With any effort like this, the data tells the story - both of how we did, and areas for focus and improvement moving forward. Over 33 events across the globe, we saw:

• 86% of events had no single-use plastic bottles, dishes, cutlery or straws- 45% had no single-use plastic at all!

• 76% of events had no paper at registration, no paper brochures/attendee handouts or surveys- 55% had no paper at the event!

• 62% of events included sustainable nametags or recyclable lanyards

• 93% of events had sustainable merchandise and no single-use event shirts

• 72% of events used only re-usable furniture, peripherals booth stands and digital backdrops

• 55% of events included locally sourced menu and drinking water

“Having a deliberate focus on sustainability certainly informed the choices we made around how the events were produced,” said Leslie Beckman, Senior Field Marketing Director, Asia Pacific for Qlik and Founder The Eco-Marketing Project. “It also informed the conversations we had with our attendees and venue partners, which had a significant impact on our ability to drive real change during the tour. As just one example, for the approximately 4,000 people attending the QlikWorld Tour events, the amount of single use plastic avoided equates to nearly 1 metric ton of CO2. For those of us who think visually, that equates to almost a full hot air balloons' worth of air!”

Qlik is dedicated to a path to Net Zero CO2e emissions and will include the 139.3 CO2e emissions from the QlikWorld events in our overall carbon reduction strategies, including the support of organizations working to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

One of the brightest areas of progress and an exciting trend is what’s happening with venues, who are taking their local footprint/impact and need to be more sustainable seriously. For example, for our upcoming QlikWorld event in April 2023 in Las Vegas the team is already engaged with our venue host Mandalay Bay, who recently presented best practices to Qlik so we can partner in designing an event with the goal of being carbon neutral.

The achievements we accomplished will be used to set guidelines for all Qlik events in 2023, and soon we will be creating a customer demo version of this application to extend the functionality for marketing teams at Qlik customers!

Setting sustainability data goals both internally and in areas like events can drive real world behavioral changes and positive impact.