Exploring the Feasibility of Zero Waste Approaches in Toronto’s Event Industry

Events and festivals are integral to the City of Toronto’s culture as they bring various niche communities together, attract many tourists nationally and internationally, and are a source of income for businesses. Although all events are different, they all use a tremendous amount of resources and generate waste. As the world transitions quickly towards sustainable regulations and practices, the lack of educational opportunities that intersect between sustainability and event planning create an urgency for planners to receive the information needed to become successful in a fast-paced industry. Without proper guidance and knowledge, even the best intention event planners may miss the mark in terms of their sustainability targets, creating reputational risks for their organizations and skepticism of sustainability initiatives by event attendees. By applying a Zero Waste Framework, this research analyzes the challenges being experienced by various stakeholders through semi-structured interviews within the event industry to intervene at the highest level of the Zero Waste hierarchy – rethink and redesign. This research recommends a unique way to aggregate successful waste reducing strategies from different cities, organizations, and businesses in a feasible and low-cost way to maximize impact. The recommendations put forward aim to reduce barriers and increase benefits for planners to act toward sustainability and ultimately support Toronto’s TransformTO and Net Zero strategy.