World Forum Working Towards a Sustainable Future.

Sustainable development is moving from a side issue to a basic requirement, as all industries are finding innovative ways to become greener. The event industry is no exception, and event venues such as World Forum The Hague are making great progress. We sat down with Kirsten Vosmer, commercial director at World Forum, to talk about their venue’s sustainable initiatives and its vision for the future.

World Forum is a midsize conference centre that opened more than 50 years ago. The venue hosts international conferences and events and has the vision to be the most high-level conference centre in the Netherlands. To reach this goal, World Forum makes sure that the venue stays attractive to event organisers all over the world. Sustainability is one of the four focus areas that World Forum incorporates in its daily practice, along with safety and security, vitality, and service. Kirsten notes that their sustainable development has already shown positive results. “The fact that sustainability is one of World Forum’s Unique Selling Points, makes event organisers gravitate more towards our venue. They are now more invested than ever in the topic of sustainability.” 

One of World Forum’s recent projects was a collaboration with water management company Dunea. The venue significantly reduced the use of plastic and has installed five tap water stations for visitors to fill their glasses or bottle with Dunea’s water, which is extracted from the dunes between Monster and Katwijk. “Plastic is now forbidden at World Forum,” Kirsten said, “and it was not a hard transition to make! Everybody is happy to participate.” Other sustainable developments that have kept World Forum busy are the instalment of a green roof with solar panels, finding a new waste management supplier to reduce waste, reducing their energy consumption levels, and only using local suppliers. As holders of the Gold Green Key and the ISO-20121 certificate, the fruits of their sustainable initiatives are clear. The Gold Green Key is a voluntary eco-label award that less than 5,000 venues around the world hold and ISO-20121 is an International Standard for sustainable events. “Getting these accreditations was not easy as there were many requirements, but we are very proud to now be able to walk the talk,” Kirsten remarked.

Next to sustainable practices such as promoting the use of bicycles and public transport, and offering hybrid events to reduce emissions, World Forum is also continuously coming up with new goals. One of their goals this year is to become paperless by investing in tablets and laptops. “This way people can walk around with all the information they need without carrying stacks of paper files. It’s a huge project that will take some time to fully adjust to”. In addition to this initiative is the inclusion of hybrid events in World Forum’s arsenal of options for event hosts. As an early adopter, they worked together with Obsession & Squares to develop their own online platform called Squares. They also built a studio for hosting webinars and hybrid events that puts them on the forefront of sustainable practices. Some of the hybrid events that World Forum have hosted have even been on the topic of sustainability, including the Climate Adaption Summit in 2021.

Would you like to stay up to date with World Forum’s sustainable developments? Make sure to follow them on LinkedIn or pay a visit to their website, where you can also find their annual sustainability report. If you would like to host your next event at World Forum, contact us at The Hague Convention Bureau to find out more.