FasterForward
FasterForward is Informa’s approach to sustainable business.
Our aim is to become an ever more sustainable, positive impact business. Through the FasterForward programme, we are embedding sustainability into everything we do and seizing opportunities from helping our customers and markets do the same.
FasterForward is a structured three-part programme with ambitious commitments and a wide range of activities, covering Informa's business operations, our brands and products and our broader community impact.
When it comes to sustainability, we’re moving FasterForward.
Faster to Zero
Under the Faster to Zero pillar, we are moving faster to become a zero waste and net zero carbon business.
To help meet the urgent challenges of a changing world, this means taking accelerated steps to reduce our carbon and waste footprint with the aim of becoming a zero waste and net zero carbon business by 2030.
Wherever we can, we are also actively helping our partners, customers and wider markets to achieve the same.
1
Become carbon neutral as a business and across our products by 2025
2
Halve the waste generated through our products and events by 2025
3
Become zero waste and net zero carbon by 2030 or earlier
Faster to Zero in action
Powered by renewable electricity
We're proud that more than 95% of the electricity used in our offices comes from renewable sources.
We're working to reduce the amount of energy and water that our offices use and reduce the waste they generate. We're using less office space than in the past, and using that space more efficiently, partly because our colleagues are working more flexibly.
But we've also brought green energy to our buildings in different ways. We purchase energy attribution certificates, so that the electricity we use is matched up with electricity generated from renewable sources.
Our largest offices have LEED or BREEAM ratings.
Carbon offsetting for business travel
Since 2020, we have offset 100% of the carbon produced by colleagues when travelling on business.
Informa purchases high quality, certified carbon offsets. These support fully validated projects around the world that reduce or avoid greenhouse gases being emitted.
Reducing event waste
Waste reduction is high on the agenda at Pharmapack, which hosts over 5,000 people and 370 exhibitors working in pharmaceutical packaging in Paris every year.
In every corner of the event, we’ve implemented changes and improvements to reduce waste wherever we find it.
That’s included moving to digital badges and publications, using reusable signage and recyclable lanyards, recycling carpet instead of sending it to landfill and working with a local partner to turn leftover food into compost.
We’ve even replaced walls – walling off the 2023 event’s Learning Lab with plants instead of hard materials.
Sustainability Inside
All across Informa, our brands and products connect people with knowledge.
Our greatest impact on the world is through the specialist content and expert connections we deliver, and under the Sustainability Inside pillar, we are embedding sustainability inside every one of our brands.
Whether it’s through content, events, intelligence, research or training, Sustainability Inside helps our customers accelerate their own sustainable development, creating growth opportunities for our brands and supporting progress in the specialist markets we serve.
4
Embed sustainability inside 100% of our brands by 2025
5
Help and promote the achievement of the
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals through our brands
Sustainability Inside in action
Sustainable Development Goals Online
Sustainable Development Goals Online (SDGO) is a unique digital library that brings together all Taylor & Francis research relating to the UN’s sustainability priorities.
It includes over 12,000 book chapters and journal articles, essays, videos and lesson plans mapped to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
A proportion of the collection is always available to access for free.
Helping customers on their sustainability journey
At Sourcing at Magic, an international gathering of fashion manufacturers, suppliers and service providers, we’re helping exhibitors on their sustainability journey.
One way we’ve done this is to partner with Hey Social Good, a platform that independently assesses and verifies brands’ sustainability credentials.
Exhibitors who meet the highest standards of sustainability are given a plaque on their stand to demonstrate their performance and help buyers find them more easily. We also showcase these exhibitors in our onsite sustainable gallery, enabling our community to learn from and be inspired by each other. And, we make sure Hey Social Good are available to work directly with exhibitors to continue their sustainability journey.
Giving diverse talent a platform
Today, women fill just 12% of senior roles in private equity. Our private equity team is working to give women a greater platform and showcase a diversity of talent at our events.
We launched the sold-out Women in Private Markets Forum in 2023 and are expanding it in 2024, opening it up to a wider audience and adding a networking event so women can connect and share their experiences.
Plus, we reached a new high at SuperReturn International 2023 – the world’s leading private equity event – with a line up where 34% of our speakers were women.
Impact Multiplier
Under FasterForward, the Impact Multiplier pillar is about the positive impact we create when we can improve access to our specialist knowledge, help people connect more efficiently and invest in our communities.
Through the content we provide, we can help connect and inform those who struggle to access specialist knowledge and professional networks.
When they connect at our events and online, we can help customers be even smarter and more efficient with their time and travel.
Where we work in a specialist or local community, we can partner with them and invest in ways that help them succeed and create more positive impacts in turn.
6
Enable one million disconnected people to access networks and knowledge by 2025
7
Contribute $5bn per year in value for our host cities by 2025
8
Contribute value of at least 1% of profit before tax to community groups by 2025
9
Save customers more carbon than we emit by 2025
Impact Multiplier in Action
Bringing new talent into our markets
We’ve created a programme called Diversity Bridge, in partnership with The Diversity Org, which connects students from under-represented communities with career opportunities in the markets we serve.
We invite high school students and students from historically Black Colleges and Universities to come onsite at our events, meet companies, attend special workshops, tour the event and network.
Feedback has been very positive. It’s exposed students to careers they may not have known existed and helped them make professional contacts. Also, it’s helped our customers find new talent – particularly useful for those in industries that are harder to recruit in. We’re aiming to scale the programme to reach 1,500 students in 2024.
It starts with a great education
Across Informa, our teams spend time helping the communities they work thrive.
In China, the team behind CBME, an event dedicated to children and maternity products, has focused on supporting children’s education and particularly rural schools, which often have a shortage of teachers.
Colleagues have visited students and their parents at home to understand how to support their education and shared their own journeys into professional life. We have also donated money to fund educational materials at rural schools.
It’s the start of a long term project to help children’s education all the way through high school.
No food goes to waste
In Brazil, our teams have a particular focus on making sure food gets to people who need it the most.
At Agrishow Brazil in 2023, we donated 500kg of food to the community near to the event site – the equivalent of 700 meals – via four local charities. This was excess food that was not used at the event and would otherwise have been destroyed.
At the Fispal Food Service event for food professionals, we partnered with a local non-profit organisation, Quebrada Alimentada, to collect food and donate food baskets to families in need. In total four tons of food were collected and donated.