CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
“If we achieve our sustainability efforts and no one follows, we will have failed.”
Paul Polman, Author & Fmr. CEO of Unilever
Responsibility in ‘Everything’
As the world’s leading strategic experience marketing agency, we are committed to creating lasting change in our industry through sustainable and inclusive live, digital, and hybrid experiences. At the forefront of experiential marketing, Experience Everything is our core mission. As industry leaders, we uphold responsible practices and ensure a holistic approach to everything we do.
Therefore corporate responsibility is integral to our identity and influences everything we plan, imagine, create and deliver. We recognize that sustainable development is an ongoing journey. Science, being objective and free of political bias, is our most valuable tool for understanding the world and addressing the challenges we face. We pledge to continually examine, adopt, and recommend sustainable practices that yield measurable results, in collaboration with our clients and partners, for the benefit of our shared planet and a greater respect for all living things.
Catalysts for Radical Collaboration
We are the passionate and fearless catalyst for radical collaboration. We have walked the walk and are blazing the trail, driven by our credo: “make no small plans”. For us, as creators, thinkers and doers, this credo entails thinking fearless and thinking ahead every day to ensure change for a sustainable future.
By paving the way for future-proof experience marketing, we have already created processes and practices to work with our clients, adding value through our collaborative expertise by transforming responsible strategies into impactful experiences that resonate around the world. Along the way, we bring certainty and compliance at every step of our journey together.
As a trusted partner, we help clients navigate what has become a complex sustainability landscape. Our internal experts have created a considerable collection of measurements, which help minimize business risk and design more sustainable and responsible initiatives.
- When sustainability isn’t a client priority, we address their pain points and offer solutions and strategies that can drive real business value
- When planning each element of an event, we consider the environmental impact of decisions made and do what we can together with our clients to mitigate the impact
- We ask difficult questions of our clients and supply chain when necessary
- We create sustainability playbooks for our clients that align with their mission and goals
Global Trailblazing
For over a decade, our teams have taken the initiative to be stewards for sustainable development, woven throughout GPJ’s leadership and global business practices.
GPJ India teamed up with Environmental Synergies in Development (ENSYDE) to further enact change within the events and experience industry. ENSYDE has been working on reducing the environmental footprint through awareness and action for 3 decades now, and the recent partnership only strengthens our belief that every individual and collective action can have a positive impact on our environment.
GPJ Germany has achieved ISO 20121 certification for Sustainable Event Management in 2024. Through the team’s diligence and passion, they are ISO certified according to Environmental (ISO 14001), Work & Health (ISO 45001) and Quality Management (ISO 9001). GPJ Germany is purchasing green electricity (since 2019) and offsetting non-avoidable emissions (since 2018).
GPJ UK is a founding member of isla, a non-profit organization created by the events industry for the events industry. Our membership includes training, resources and connection to a network of industry professionals, suppliers with a shared commitment towards a net-zero carbon industry by 2030. We have implemented the isla TRACE program, which measures the environmental impact of events as a path to further reducing their carbon footprint.
You can access our current environmental policy here to see how George P. Johnson (GPJ) embraces its environmental responsibilities. We comply with environmental and health & safety regulations and legislation in each country we are operating in.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
Robert Swan, OBE; Author and Renowned Explorer
Leading By Example
GPJ fabrication and graphic production strives to provide customers with the best experience and product. Adhering to the highest ethical standards, great care is taken to understand not only the physical products that are utilized and produced, but the methodology of how they are made. Endeavors must be balanced between external expectations, sustainability desires, environmental concerns, and production feasibility.
To that end, being a good steward of positive impacts is not only good practice and a moral obligation, but often goes hand-in-hand with comprehensive economic efforts:
- GPJ fabrication facilities practice recycling of all aluminum, steel, and paper waste through certified waste handlers.
- Updated facility light fixtures to high efficiency LED with motion sensors – with savings of up to 28% over traditional lighting technology.
- The high efficiency dust collection system reduces cutting waste emissions for wood and metal particulates and saves up to 50% energy usage over similar models.
- GPJ always looks for sustainable material solutions that are durable, pristine, and environmentally sustainable/safe.
- A large portion of the printing effort for grand format and vinyl printing is with ultraviolet curable inks – allowing us to move away from solvent and high VOC type ink.
- Materials like ConVerd Board and Falconboard are 100% recyclable, variable colors & styles and cost-effective.
Experiences, Sustained
From sustainability strategies and playbooks to responsible event execution. We have supported award-winning initiatives for several of our clients.
With GPJ, you benefit from having strategists, consultants, and operational implementers all in one place. We don’t just advise; we already practice in our own business – continuously and every day.
With clients like Salesforce, Google, Workday, and others, we’re partnering on innovative practices in sustainability, and broadening efforts across a wide client portfolio. Here are a few examples of how we’re changing the landscape of how experiences are produced.
Cisco Live EMEA 2023
The brief was to deliver the most sustainable Cisco Live to date, thus GPJ and Cisco had to collaborate to make meaningful changes, deliver needs and expectations while reducing the event’s impact on the environment; all at the same time.
This translated into a journey punctuated by reducing, reusing and recycling, while undertaking waste audit trails and tracking CO2e.
Workday Rising 2023
The 2023 Workday Rising program has achieved the world-class Events Industry Council (EIC) Sustainable Event Standards for Events Gold certification.
The standard specifies performance criteria in the areas of organizational management, marketing, communications and engagement, climate action, water management, materials and circularity, supply chain management, diversity, equity and inclusion, accessibility and social impact.
“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.”
Jane Goodall, DBE; English Primatologist