The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) and Destination Canada surveyed 125 associations and not-for-profits on their sustainability stance between May and August this year, repeating a temperature check first taken in 2023.
“Our industry has moved beyond debating whether sustainability matters,” said CEO of ICCA, Dr. Senthil Gopinath.
“The challenge now is transforming aspiration into accountability. This report provides the insight and evidence our community needs to act with purpose and precision.”
The 2025 responses showed that while most associations – 66 per cent – said sustainability was either very or extremely important to their organisation, only 39 per cent were actually measuring the carbon footprint of their events and an even smaller portion had integrated sustainability into organisational policies, RFPs, event codes of conduct or mission statements.
At least half of all association respondents said they considered sustainability in planning stages – 50 per cent for strategic and business planning and 62 per cent for event planning.
On the carbon calculation front, 19 per cent of those surveyed said they relied on event hosts for calculations, 24 per cent said they didn’t measure their carbon footprint at all, while 13 per cent didn’t even know measurement tools existed.
When comparing to the 2023 data, the latest results show that a significant proportion of associations have started actively measuring their carbon footprint over the last few years – two years ago, 45 per cent of respondents said they didn’t calculate their carbon footprint.
However, other sustainability measures seem to be – at least on the surface – going in the wrong direction.
When comparing 2023 data to 2025, more associations in 2023 rated sustainability either extremely or very important – 71 per cent two years ago, compared to 66 per cent now – while survey responses also showed that association event delegates were more likely to be pushing for sustainability change in 2023 than in 2025.
Explanations offered within the report as potential reasons for delegates not pushing sustainability as strongly include associations having increased their sustainable actions or that there is a larger assumption amongst delegates that an event is sustainable.
The research also explored the views of associations in relation to the cost of sustainability and found contrary results.
Just over half of respondents said they would be happy to pay more for sustainable options at their events – generally only a little more. However, cost was also cited as the most common challenge in planning sustainable events and was also considered the top priority for RFPs.
