For higher credibility and recognition of their efforts and the environmental performance of their events, organizers can choose to undergo third-party verification and get a certification.
The initial report generated by the Green Events Tool can be submitted to the certification team for a third-party verification. Once the verification is complete, the GET issues a certification and publishes it for the general public and for the organizer’s communication purposes.
Depending on the overall sustainability achievement of the event, four different ratings are possible: Green (basic), Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Depending upon the level of offsetting carried out with recognized GHG programs, and the completion of activities to avoid GHG emissions, the event can also receive the ‘carbon neutral’ recognition. The improvement of the sustainability checklist and good practices is an ongoing process for the long term. As more events complete their sustainability checklist assessment, the more best practice examples can be collected to improve the scoring and rating system. In doing so, the checklist questions and its scoring/rating criteria may be upgraded in the future.
To avoid any bias for the rating, the GET distinguishes the certificate generated for different versions of the checklist. Under current version 1, the following criteria have been adopted:
The user has completed the event sustainability checklist addressing all questions marked as “mandatory”. The event gets 50% of the total score.
Same as Green Rating but with 70% of the total score achieved.
Same as Bronze Rating but with 75% of the score of each category achieved.
Same as Silver Rating but with 90% of the score of each category achieved.