Subtract: The Sustainability Question Worth Asking Instead of 'Can I Recycle This?'
Johanna Behm
The Reframe: Subtract
Earlier this year I stood in front of a packed room of event pros at Meeting Professionals International (MPI) ACE Summit and talked about making events more sustainable. The panel consisting of Workday’s Event Director and Recology, a pioneering recycling and circularity operator servicing San Francisco and surrounding counties, expected big questions about carbon. What we got was a fully packed room of venue professionals, planners, and supplies burying us in practical questions that cover routine decision making situations at the live event floor.
"Is this material okay to recycle?"
"Won't this cost more?"
"But my attendees will want meat."
These are good questions. They are also, quietly, the wrong place to start.
Here is the whole idea of this post in one word: subtract. Before you ask how to dispose of something better, ask whether you need to buy it in the first place, and whether you can use what you already have. Subtraction is the cheapest, most fun, and most underrated move in event design and in sustainability. The word “sustainability” in my native language Finnish is “kestävyys”, and in fact translates to many words, including “durable”, “stamina”, “resilience”, and “endurance”. I believe this is what meeting professionals already are, an insanely creative and hard working bunch of people, delivering moments of magic under extreme pressure and doing that with a smile. That’s really all that’s needed when it comes to building a resilient event industry that keeps attracting the next generation of attendees and planners while delighting attendees with new experiences.
Why This Matters Now
The most common question we get is some version of "can I recycle this?" It is a reasonable thing to ask, and the honest answer is usually "maybe, depending on your local hauler." But that answer misses the point.
The zero-waste hierarchy ranks your options in a clear order: reduce first, reuse second, recycle only if you must. Recycling sits near the bottom because the material has already been made, shipped, printed, and used by the time it gets there. Everything upstream of the bin has already cost money and resources.
So when someone asks "is material X recyclable?", the more useful reply is a question back: "Could you reuse it instead?"
That one swap changes what you can do. "Can I recycle this?" has a yes or no answer. "How can I reuse this?" has a hundred creative answers, and some of them delight your attendees.
The Design Lens
Treat each of those three questions as a design brief instead of a problem.
Reuse is the party trick
Workday's events team has shifted its merchandise to include conference bags made from event fabric from the previous year, and Workday Rising has earned the Events Industry Council's Platinum-level sustainable events certification two years running. In my own experience, attendees (myself included) go absolutely wild for this kind of thing. A bag made from last year's show fabric is one of a kind, it has a story, and nobody else has one. That is hard to buy off a catalog.
Workday also gave their customer GAP an unique spotlight after asking a simple (and a bit random) question: “Do you have excess denim?”. Turns out GAP does and they were gladly willing to let Workday’s team take it from them. Attendees were absolutely thrilled to receive stylish denim accessories and GAP received a ton of goodwill and positive attention from hundreds of people. Customer love doesn’t always have to arrive in the form of a boring annual gift basket.
Reuse does not have to mean a big program. It can start with signage without a date printed on it, banners that become next year's bags, or décor you store between shows instead of tossing. For more inspiration, borrowed from major touring artist concerts, you can reference REVERB’s sustainable merch guide.
"Won't plant-based food cost more?"
The published evidence points the other way, with a caveat we will name up front: most of it comes from institutional dining (hospitals and universities), not event catering.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston reported cost avoidance averaging over 11 percent of its annual food purchasing spend each year since 2022 after shifting toward plant-forward purchasing. That figure comes from a cost avoidance method (an estimate of what was saved by swapping higher-priced animal proteins for plant proteins), reviewed by data experts at Health Care Without Harm and the World Resources Institute.
A report by Bryant Research on UK university dining put the cost of plant-based catering about 30 percent below meat-based offerings across more than 140 ingredients. The summary we could find does not say how the numbers were derived, so treat it as an estimate.
Our team at Envire is working on an academic study to get verified figures published from the events industry (reach out for more information). In the meantime, from personal experience I can share that the catering bill for Bay Area Meeting Industry Day 2026 was at least 20% less due to a fully plant based menu.
"But my attendees will want meat"
They might, until the food is good. A University of Cambridge team studied three college cafeterias and found that doubling the vegetarian options raised the share of vegetarian meals chosen by 41 to 79 percent, with no effect on overall food sales. Plant-based caterers who feed touring crews, including on Billie Eilish's tour, have shown the same thing at much larger scale: when it is delicious, nobody asks where the meat went. Same applies to major corporate events, like Workday Rising (yes, it’s plant based, you didn’t notice?).
Rename the food
Here is the easiest trick in this whole post. Skip the word "vegan" on the menu. Call it "Summer Inspired Tacos," add small gluten-free and dairy-free labels where they apply, and leave it there. You would be surprised how much people enjoy food when we stop putting a label on it and just call it food.
There is research behind the instinct: In a 46-day study at a Stanford dining hall, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, vegetables with indulgent, flavor-focused names were chosen by 25 percent more diners than the same vegetables with plain names, and by 41 percent more than those with healthy-restrictive labels. That study tested vegetable labels, not the word "vegan," so it supports the principle (describe the flavor, not the diet) rather than proving a result for your menu.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel either. Support+Feed has wonderful resources available from catering guides, catering listings, and tips for reducing food waste (tested at major touring artist concerts).
Swipe File: Ten Questions to Ask Before Your Next Event
Oregon Convention Center provides an plug-and-play circularity program, you can just opt-in and show up
Copy these into your next planning call. Each one subtracts something.
Before you buy anything
Do we need this item at all?
Do we already own something that could do this job (last year's fabric, banners, signage, décor)?
Can we leave the year off so it works again next time?
Where does it go after the show: back into storage, to a partner, or to a local nonprofit?
Before you finalize the menu
Can our caterer build the default menu around plant-based dishes?
Does every dish have a flavor-first name, with gluten-free and dairy-free labels only where they apply?
Are you working with a dedicated vegan chef who knows how to make it taste great? Find resources from organizations powering plat-forward menus for Billie Eilish tour here.
Before you sign with the venue
Can the venue tell us what events hosted at their venue consume in waste, energy, and utilities?
Can they accommodate your specific sustainability requests or even proactively propose best practices?
Are the claims the venue is making verifiable with real data?
Signal Vs. Noise
Signal: Reuse ranks above recycling. Institutional data suggests plant-forward menus can lower food spend. Describing the flavor beats labeling the diet. You might find out that your attendees appreciate the new experiences and go crazy over your circular swag.
Noise: "Is it recyclable?" as your first sustainability question. "Vegan" printed on the menu. Overcomplicating the process.
One Question to Sit With
The questions in that MPI room were about what to do with materials once they were already on the floor. The better question comes earlier, and it is the one Workday's team asked: "How can I reuse this?"
Ask it before the next order goes out, and see what you come up with. The creative answers are usually the ones attendees remember.
