2019
Sustainability Report

Championing thespecialists who
solve global
challenges

Helping ourcustomers makeconnections

Managing
sustainability
across all
our events

Success
is apartnership

Our colleagues’
shared culture

Taking action
to combat
climate change

page 10page 18

page 26

page 30

page 36

page 42Championing
Sustainability

Introduction to Informa

Championing
the specialist
Informa exists to champion
the specialist, connecting
people with knowledge tohelp them learn more, know
more and do more.
We champion and connect
specialists all over the world
through events, intelligenceproducts and scholarly
publishing. We’re a FTSE 100
company with hundreds ofpowerful brands helping
customers in dozens ofspecialist markets to succeed.
For more information, see our Annual Report
informa.com/investors/annual-reports

Our Divisions

Informa Connect delivers
major events regarded as
the annual convening place
for a specialist market orcommunity, and creates digitalplatforms that provide yearround connections.

Informa Intelligence provides
relevant, high quality andcritical data and insight, tocustomers working in large,
complex and specialist markets
including Pharma, Financeand Maritime.

Informa Markets creates
opportunities for customers allover the world to connect, learn
and trade. We organise largescale, branded exhibitions anddeliver data, digital content andonline platforms that support
the flow of knowledge andtransactions in specialist markets.

Informa Tech is a specialist intechnology. Through expert
data, research andconsultancy, training anddigital media, and content andnetworking at major events,
we help businesses learn moreand do more in technology.

Taylor & Francis is a specialistin scholarly research andhelping academic and researchcommunities make new
breakthroughs. We curate andpublish high quality peerreviewed research, connecting
specialists to knowledge thathelps them learn more andadvances progress in their fieldof study and broader society.
Our divisions are underpinned by: Global Support.
Global Support supports each operating divisionand comprises Informa’s Group functions andGroup Operations.

Chairman’s
introduction

I’m delighted to introduce Informa’s 2019 Sustainability Report.
There are many ways a business can communicate what it’s doingon sustainability. Personally, I’m always inspired by hearing first-handfrom colleagues on what they are seeing in their markets and roles,
and what they are putting into place every day. This report captures
those stories and shares them, hopefully acting as a catalyst for
further sustainable change within our business.
One of the things 2019 will be remembered for is as the year theenvironmental agenda came to the forefront of society’s attention.
At Informa, it was a year of further progress and improvement,
when we also took the opportunity to build on our approach andcommitments to sustainability.
The opportunity to help our customers act more sustainably intheir business, including managing the increasing impacts ofclimate change, is presenting itself more and more clearly. This isalso something that is now much more frequently on the agenda
of investors too.
We’re privileged to have relationships with some of the brightest
people in the world within the many specialist customers markets weserve, and most have strong views on sustainability. In a competitivemarketplace, it gives us an edge to be regarded as a leader on anissue that is becoming increasingly important.
The largest opportunity, perhaps, is to get this right for colleagues
and future talent. Our business is only as good as the people we
attract, retain and engage, and part of that is down to listening toand harnessing the interests and passions of our colleagues.
It is easy to fall back on platitudes on issues of sustainability.
Instinctively, if I see something that needs doing, I find a way to do it,
and as a business Informa prides itself on ambition allied to acting
small and rolling up our sleeves. Our new FasterForward programme
has set Informa on a path to be a Champion of Sustainability – one thatcan support suppliers, partners and competitors to be moresustainable too.
Further progress and improvement is, of course, still ahead of us.
The Board will be closely monitoring developments and ensuring
the business has the capabilities and the support to achieve ourambitions. The main reason I know we will succeed is that, as thestories in this report show, our colleagues everywhere have theenergy and determination that achieving these new goals
will require.

Derek Mapp
Chairman
April 2020

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1

95%

2019
Sustainability
highlightsof our electricity
is now renewable>700
More than
700 solar
panelsinstalled in
Boulder

There are many great stories to tellaround Informa's sustainability work thisyear. Here are a few highlights but weencourage you to read on for more detailas colleagues from around the businessintroduce us to some of their work.

CertifiedScience Based
Targets commit
us to halve thecarbonfootprint fromour businessand reduce
supply chain
emissions by
20%
(p44)

Awards and recognition

94%

12,000of paper fromsustainable sources(p43)“We focus on SDG4and SDG17 to support
the delivery of allof the goals”(p10)

chapters on our new SDG Online
product from T&F. 10% freely
available at any time (p12)Supporting diversity across thegaming and other tech industries(p19)

Gainedassuranceover selectedsustainability
data for the
first timeincrease in sign ups for our
AgraME event when we associatedwith the UN SDGs (p13)

2.5m

new laptops for kids now
include some of our STEM
content for free (p17)

(p51)

84%

Launch of our FasterForward
Sustainability programme to takeus to 2025 and beyondof event attendees say that it mattersto them that events are run ina responsible and sustainable way (p20)(p8)

The Informa
Constitution

52%

7/10
Informa Rainbow,
our LGBTQIA+
community launched

Launch of the Informa
Constitution and our Four
Guiding Principles

(p38)

(p6)

attendees tell us that the event makes
them more able to address the big
challenges their sector is seeking
to solve (p20)

Innovation challenge
launched with Africa50
Investment Bank
(p24)

Walk the World
doubles in size again
(p40)

80%

83%

of colleagues
say they are
engagedsay their work
gives them apersonal sense ofaccomplishment

7,000
participants

60%

Women
were:

colleagues£380k
raised30% of the Board
30% of the leadership team
62% of all promotions

Launch of our ground-breaking
sustainable event management system
(p26)

>300
>60
2
ISO

events already committed
to the Fundamentals
events already submitted
scores in the first 4 months

events gain world first Platinum
rating for sustainable events

Vitafoods gains ISO20121
certification

100

recent immigrants to Toronto werebought a ticket to our One of a Kind
Show by a fellow attendee (p22)Worked with Unilever to amplify
sustainable business practices in thenatural foods industry (p25)

Events industry partnership
crowdfunds impact study
(p30)

14%
of colleagues volunteered

Partnerships around the world
deliver value for us andnon-profits(p32)

In conversation with the CEO

Informa:Championing
Sustainability

In that sense, in 2019 we demonstrated the strength of theplatform we have invested in over the last six or seven years.
This made it the perfect time to refresh and crystallise our Purpose
and Guiding Principles as a Company, in what you and I now call the
Informa Constitution. We defined who we are as a business today
and, as a result, who we will be has become clearer to ourselves
and our Shareholders.

Ben: The introduction of the Constitution, with a clear purpose

and set of guiding principles, felt like a significant developmentin our culture to many of us.

Stephen: Yes. Describing how we go about doing business isa powerful thing.
A conversation between Stephen A. Carter, Group Chief
Executive, and Ben Wielgus, Head of Sustainability.
Ben: As an Informa colleague, I found it an exciting, busy andfulfilling year, with all the many activities going on around theAccelerated Integration Plan, including the launch of the Informa
Constitution. How would you describe the year?
Stephen: I saw 2019 as something of a tipping point. It was theyear we fulfilled the promises we made to our shareholders inreturn for their confidence and support to further expand theGroup. We brought many teams and colleagues together into
one business, we made the enlarged Group more efficient, andwe just achieved another year of growth. That builds external
trust and internal confidence.

We have talked before about Informa being a people business,a face-to-face business, and a human business. When I spend timewith the thousands of colleagues who provided input and ideas tohelp develop our Constitution, I saw colleagues who in many ways
are very different from each other, working in different geographiesand different businesses. However, all have a set of shared values
and beliefs, which are now enshrined in our shared Constitution.
It is important, because it says so much to current and futurecolleagues and to shareholders, partners and suppliers, about
the kind of people we are at Informa, and the kind of business
we want to be.

Ben: It certainly feels to me like there is a growing feelingof connection, and ambition as well. Not least of which is in the
launch of our new FasterForward programme which sets us on
an ambitious path to support the shift to an ever more sustainable
way of doing things. How is this important to our culture?

Stephen: We have always said one of our long-term objectives
is that when colleagues move on from Informa, and they areinterviewing for another job, the hiring manager will say “you were
doing that at Informa, that’s impressive!” Of course, that will result
partly from Informa being a successful business – by being a goodplace to work, by serving customers, and creating jobs.
Being a successful business also means being successful in creating
benefits for our customers, our communities and the wider
societies we operate in. We are now at a stage where we can set
some ambitious targets for our environmental, social and economic
impacts as a business, and I believe this focus on sustainability will
become an increasingly important component of our culture andour commercial offering.

Ben: Many of us are excited about these plans. Why do you think
this is the right time for Informa?

Stephen: It goes back to the business we have built over the last

six or seven years. Our investments and progressive improvements,
the talent we have brought in, the commercial success, all of those
things give us both the capability and the licence to go further
now. When we look at the initiatives and stories from around thebusiness, we see a growing ambition and willingness to leadby example, The Informa Way. The vast majority of people inInforma want to do the best thing for their customers and fortheir communities.
Our Walk the World programme is something we are allvery proud of at Informa – but the innovation I see from manyof our colleagues, in how we produce our products and help ourcustomers achieve their goals, including addressing social andenvironmental impacts – these are all key to how we will contribute
positively to change going forward.
I have always believed in business as a force for good.
At Informa, we are one of the world’s leading knowledge andinformation providers which creates significant opportunities tohelp our specialist markets address their own challenges, against
a backdrop of growing environmental and social pressures. Everybusiness needs to play its role and whilst, as a knowledge andinformation company, our direct impact is limited this does notremove the imperative and the opportunity to be a better andmore sustainable business.

Ben: Businesses of our scale are scrutinized not only for our direct
impact, but for our indirect impact too. And as you know, some ofour businesses rely on customers taking flights to attend events.
Are you concerned about the risk to our business if people decideto cut back on flying?

Stephen: That is a great question. Those businesses in Informa

4

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

to challenges like climate change. Digital connectivity sustains
relationships, but in-person connections help ensure relationships
are trusted and effective and, therefore, new ideas are
adopted faster.
The platforms we create allow for highly efficient in-person
connections, helping our customers limit their own carbon
footprint. Surveys of our customer groups tell us that being able tomeet important contacts, access education, network and do deals
all in one place saves significant time and cost and helps cut back on
numerous other travel obligations that would otherwise be taken.
It is efficient for them, it is efficient for their business, and it iseffective for the wider environment.
As a convener, facilitator and connector, the role we play, thething we must keep sight of, is that we exist to help others. Many
specialist industries will provide the solutions, but every industry
will have to adapt. We exist to champion the people who will
create solutions, and to help industries make progress efficiently,
including our own.

that create, manage, operate and curate major events, actually
reduce flights, save travel, and increase connectivity. That is thepower of our large-scale branded portfolio. It is the reach and abilityof a large scale to bring whole specialist communities together
in one place, at one time.

Stephen A. Carter

Our events also connect directly to the power of human ingenuity.
Our future, as a species, depends upon ideas rapidly spreading
across continents, and that is even more important when it comes

Head of SustainabilityGroup Chief Executive
Ben Wielgus

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5

The Informa Constitution

Uniting colleagues together
in a shared purpose
The Informa Constitution reinforces
the story that has been at
the heart of our approach tosustainability for many years –that we make our biggest impacts
in the world by connecting people
with the networks and knowledge
they need to be successful insolving challenges in their specialist
markets. We believe that there areno bigger opportunities than thosethat come from solving thosechallenges around sustainable
development in all its many forms.
This provides meaningful andengaging work for all our colleagues
and a future growth platform
for the business.

A shared purpose is a powerful thing fora business like ours, now made up of over
11,000 colleagues around the world. It canunite us behind a common reason forbeing, delivered by a shared set ofprinciples. With the progressive growth inInforma over the last five years, there wasa clear opportunity to reflect on what itis that bonds all our colleagues and eachof the Group’s businesses together.
Between late 2018 and early 2019, 2,000
colleagues participated in face-to-face andonline workshops, one-to-one interviews
and an online survey. The result was a new
articulation of why Informa exists – ourpurpose – and four guiding principles
which describe key aspects of our culture
and guide how businesses, teams andindividuals work day-to-day.

Together, we call thisthe Informa Constitution.

Living the Informa Constitution

The Constitution was the major focus of
our June 2019 international management
conference, ReInvent, where 150 of ourleaders took part in discussions and activities
around our values, and committed to
upholding the Constitution. Our CEO
Stephen Carter then launched theConstitution to all colleagues, and copiesof the Constitution, signed by leaders at
the conference, were delivered to all
Informa offices.
In 2020, we’ll be further embedding theConstitution into our daily working life
– into recruitment processes, performance
reviews, customer relationship practices
and into Informa’s public-facing brand.
The annual Informa Awards will recognise
outstanding examples of colleagues living
the Constitution, and we are incorporating
the new principles into our Code of Conduct
and global policies.

Guiding Principles

Think Big, Act Small

What do our colleagues say?

•• We love ambitious thinking and taking
bold options.

“This aligns nicely to a phrase that’s used in sustainability a lot: ‘Think
Global, Act Local’ and paints a picture of colleagues all over the world
each making local changes that contribute towards a bigger collective goal.”•• At the same time, we recognise that successalso comes from rolling up our sleeves, sweating
the detail and taking personal ownership of thethings that matter.

Trust Must be Earned

What do our colleagues say?

•• We don’t just say we’re specialists; we live andbreathe the subjects we work in and thecommunities we work with.

“It’s important to me to be a trusted and valued member of the market
I work in. We’re not just a vendor, we’re a part of the community.”•• By getting closer to our customers and partners,
and offering support every step of the way,
we build their trust and the confidence to relyon us to do the right things, in the right way.

“I think this is the reason people love coming to work at Informa: they
really trust and believe in what we do, and I certainly feel this every
day in my team.”

Success is a Partnership

What do our colleagues say?

•• We get to better answers by combining skills
and talents, joining forces and embracing ideas,
wherever they come from. This broadens
perspectives, expands horizons, sparks
innovation and keeps our thinking fresh.

“Through stewardship and partnerships with our stakeholders, we really
aim to foster inclusivity, collaboration and innovation to make theindustries we work in more sustainable.”

More Freedom, Fewer Barriers

What do our colleagues say?

•• We’re light on our feet. We do things swiftly,
flexibly and with as few obstacles as possible.

“Everyone can achieve more when allowed freedom to operate andinnovate according to their skills, ideas, experiences, personalities,
needs and networks. This lets us flex how we respond to local
needs within our communities and our markets.”

Our Purpose

The Informa
Constitution

To Champion the Specialist, connecting
people with knowledge to help themlearn more, know more and do more.
“Specialism is our strength, that’s why we decided
to focus on specialism in our statement of purpose.”
Stephen A Carter, CEO6

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019“For me, this means caring about the bigger picture but not letting that
distract from the task in hand – it’s the small things that make a big
difference.”•• Our colleagues have the freedom and autonomy
to think fast, act on opportunities and do what
is best and most sustainable for us andour customers.

“We always think of our clients as part of our team. So, when they havean idea, I work with them to make it happen.”“I try to give my team the authority to make their own decisions.”

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FasterForward: Our new focus for sustainability

Our new
focus forsustainability:

Richard Menzies-Gow

FASTER TO ZEROSUSTAINABILITY INSIDEIMPACT MULTIPLIER

Director of IR & Communications

Moving faster to become a zerowaste and net zero carbon business

Embedding sustainability inside
every one of our brands to help ourcustomers accelerate sustainable
development in their specialist markets

Multiplying the positive impact we
can create when we improve accessto knowledge, help people connect
more efficiently and invest in
our communities

Informa Group, London

Going FasterForward to an
Growing demand for greater sustainability
It’s very clear that the opportunities and expectations aroundsustainability have grown significantly over the last year.
We’ve seen colleagues, customers and investors all asking
more detailed questions, with a greater level of sophistication,and increasing expectations over time.

increasingly sustainable business
FasterForward is Informa’s approach tosustainable business. It commits us to a seriesof activities between 2020-2025 that will
ensure we move FasterForward to become
an ever more sustainable, positive
impact business.

Personally, I really welcome this deeper conversation. Four
years ago, Informa chose to invest more significantly in ourinternal sustainability programme and that’s been paying
dividends in terms of the range and level of sustainable
initiatives and practices across the Group, as well as increasing
recognition in external indices and surveys. A growing numberof our different stakeholders are also now complementing us
in the progress we are making in becoming an increasingly
sustainable business.

We are moving FasterForward to embedsustainability into everything we do andhelp our customers and specialist markets
do the same.

This investment and progress provides a strong foundation
for the future, both in continuing to run our business moresustainably and in the new business opportunities this brings.

Delivering on this will help us champion
specialists in new and more engaging ways.

This is what gave the Executive Management Team theconfidence to be more ambitious in our approach, settingout a bolder path and set of commitments for sustainability
in our business. We call this FasterForward.

When it comes to sustainability, we’removing FasterForward.

To help meet the urgent challenges
of a changing world, we are moving
faster 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 will also actively
help our partners, customers andwider markets to achieve the same.

Informa exists to connect people withknowledge and our greatest impact inthe world is through the content andconnections we deliver for our customers.
To help our customers go faster, and toaccelerate the sustainable progress ofthe specialist markets we serve, we areembedding relevant sustainability
content inside each of our brands.

Through the content we provide,
we can help connect and inform those
who struggle to access knowledge andnetworks.
When they connect at our events andonline, we can help customers be event
smarter and more efficient with theirtime and travel.

Whether it’s through events, intelligence,research or training, we’ll provide
our customers with the content andconnections that can drive a moresustainable future for their
specialist markets.

Where we work in a specialist or local
community, we can partner with themand invest in ways that help themsucceed and create more positive
impacts in turn.

Our commitments

Our commitments

Our commitments

1. Become carbon neutral as a

4. Embed sustainability inside 100%

6.

business and across our products
by 2025

2. Halve the waste generated throughour products and events by 2025
3. Become zero waste and net zerocarbon by 2030 or earlierof our brands by 2025

Help and promote the achievement

5. of the UN’s Sustainable

Development Goals throughour brands

This is how, by moving FasterForward,
we can multiply our positive impact.

Enable one million disconnected
people to access networks andknowledge 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

8

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

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9

Our primary contribution to the SDGs are in goals 4 and 17
but the way we choose to run our business also contributes
to goals 8, 12 and 13 as secondary impacts.
However, by helping customers connect with the networks
and knowledge they need to solve challenges in theirmarkets, we believe we also support progress towards theother SDGs and we’ve measured the relative contribution
in the graphic below.
For each of our products or brands, we determined whether
they contribute to the SDGs and, if so, which goal they havethe most impact on. We then calculated the amount ofrevenues per SDG as an indicator of the value we create,
and therefore our activity in the relevant SDG area,
as a standard measure across our diverse business.

OG

N O P OV E

RT Y

1

2

GER

Our Contribution
Knowledge can be acquired in many ways,
and that includes from each other. We help
create efficient ways to enable tens of millions
of connections between specialists every year.
This helps them create and sustain thepartnerships needed to foster sustainable
development in their markets.

S
ITIE
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UN

How our content and networks
contribute to the

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That is how we make our biggest contribution to the world
and to the SDGs, particularly supporting SDGs 4 (on Quality
Education) and 17 (on Partnerships).

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

NCL

We work to find new ways of connecting trustworthy,
innovative solutions with the people who need them, whether
that’s in person or online. By enabling better access to content,
we help others be more successful in their aims and we believethis, more often than not, creates lasting, positive change in
our markets and beyond.

10

Strengthen the means of implementation andrevitalize the global partnership for sustainable
development

Secondary goals

Informa gives people access to the specialist knowledge,
information and products they need to be successful in theirgoals. That might be something we create or publish ourselves
but, more often, it’s created by others. In that case, our role isto provide the platforms and curation for customers to accessthat knowledge.

In the following stories, you’ll hear from colleagues who havebeen supporting specialists whose goals are to address someof the biggest challenges in society, the environment or their own
markets. As a leader in the Knowledge and Information Economy,
we have the opportunity to curate and create knowledge people
can trust as a viable solution to those challenges.

Description

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality educationand promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

At the heart of our purpose is a role in connecting
people with knowledge to help them learn more,know more and do more. The better we do this,the more value we create for others and ourselves.
This links perfectly with SDG4 and it is strongly
supported by our FasterForward commitment
to connect one million disconnected people withthe knowledge they need to succeed by 2025.

The 2020s are set to be the decade of decisive action on the
UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the framework
through which governments, businesses and society can
combine actions to address the biggest issues the world isfacing. With the publication of The Informa Constitution in 2019,
we defined Informa’s purpose as a business: To Champion theSpecialist. Through this, we have also identified a key partof our role to support the global sustainability effort too.

At the heart of all of this is our focus on content and connections
that will make a difference. Of course, the knowledge weprovide must be relevant and unbiased, but we also know thatmany of our customers and colleagues want it to help inspire
progress in their markets. We work with our customers andpartners to understand the challenges they’re trying to solve.
Increasingly, we are seeing that these challenges are intrinsicallyconnected to creating a more sustainable future for our planet.

Description

Our Contribution

INDUSTRY INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTUR E

Championing thespecialists who
help solve someof the world’s
greatest challenges

Primary goals

Our relative contribution to the SDGs

S TIC
D JU
E AN
PE AC U T I O N S
IT
INS T

E ST

PA RT NE RS HIP S TORONGAC HIE VE TH E GO

AL

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Championing the specialists who solve the world’s biggest challenges

Curating specialist

Sustainability

knowledge for thefocus gives AgraME

United Nations’ SDGs

an edgeAnna Clarkson

Krystle Almeida

Behavioural Sciences & Education;

Marketing Manager

Content, eProduct & Development

Informa Connect, Dubai

Taylor & Francis, Oxford

In July, through an amazing interdepartmental collaboration, we
launched Sustainable Development Goals Online (SDGO). It’s a huge
specialist online collection of content related to the United Nations’
17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
I remember first learning about the SDGs in 2016. I was meetingwith Jonas Haertle, Head of the UN’s secretariat for PRME, Principles
for Responsible Management Education – we co-publish a bookseries with them. Their mission is ‘to ensure that all learners
acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable
development’. One of the big challenges for higher education
institutions became clear: today’s students expect their university
courses to equip them with knowledge on sustainability. Whichmeans tutors, researchers and students need the right tools andeducational content to do that. And they need it fast!

Connecting the dots
That’s when I realised that, as one of the only publishers with
content spanning all 17 SDGs, we could curate high quality,
peer-reviewed knowledge and package it for institutions. We’d behelping to support researchers and equip people who’ll lead careers
tackling the ‘world’s biggest change programme’. And we’d becreating revenue – after all, there’s an estimated 12 trillion dollars to
be made from businesses engaging with SDGs, according to the UN.

Linked to goal:

SDGO launched with over 12,000 chapters and journal articles fromacross T&F’s content, from authors around the globe. Together withbrand new core essays, videos and lesson plans, all mapped to the
17 Goals, we believe it provides the largest resource of SDG-aligned
content in the world. Teaching and learning materials will be
continuously updated, and the content library will be updated
twice each year.

A world of potential

AgraME is the Middle East’s longest-running exhibition for
agriculture, hosted in March at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
Attendees from around the region come to keep up to date withindustry advancements and trends related to investment, livestock
health, aquaculture and controlled-environment agriculture.
In 2019, we really wanted to bring sustainability into the spotlightto help raise the importance of this issue amongst our specialist
audience – and to meet their need for more solutions to growing
food in the region.

From there, we defined new content streams rooted insustainability with help from key organisations such as the Arab
Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development (AAAID),
Innovation Norway, Agritecture, Al Rawabi and the World
Organization for Animal Health, among others. We also hada speaker from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),
Dr. Markos Tibbo Dambi, who addressed attendees on ‘Sustainable
Livestock Sector Development for Food Security and Nutritionin the Gulf Cooperation Council’, based on FAO’s flagship report,‘World Livestock: Transforming the Livestock Sector throughthe SDGs’.

The marketing edge
We believed in the importance of these topics, but was our audience
ready for this focus on sustainability? We ran an A/B marketing teston our website to find out. During the test, half of website visitors
saw our typical homepage and the others saw a version focusedon the SDGs. We saw a remarkable 52% increase in the proportionof attendees registering for the show in the second version – a signthat this isn’t just a great way of inspiring our own people, it’sa great way of attracting our audience too.
2019’s event was a great success and we’ve already developing
plans on how we make our event, and our content, even moresustainable in 2020.

The livestock sector contributes to the

There’s no other resource like it. With the content, live newsfeed
and links to related Informa Events, we believe it can become theplace for specialist content on the SDGs. SDGO has been alreadyshowcased at several important international events, and it’s not
only being bought by universities – the European Parliament
became a customer last year.

Inspired by other Informa events, we realised our opportunity tohelp connect the agriculture community to the latest knowledge
and best practice on sustainability when they gather together
at AgraME.

achievement of each of the 17 SDGs either

A source for new content

Gulf Cooperation Council with each of the

And while we’re doing good business, the whole team feels great
to be enabling others to learn about and make progress on suchimportant issues. We’ve committed to making at least 10% of thematerial available for free, on a rotating basis, so that everyone canbenefit from this resource. We’re also approaching academics andother thought leaders, inviting them to contribute lesson plans,
notes and other materials. One author wrote back to say they
were “honoured to participate”.

The UN’s SDGs were our starting point. We reviewed eachof the 17 SDGs and identified seven most relevant for our focus:
Zero Hunger (SDG2), Quality Education (SDG4), Responsible
Consumption and Production (SDG12), Climate Action (SDG13),
Life Below Water (SDG14), Life on Land (SDG15) and Partnerships
for the Goals (SDG17).

Goals and the potential synergies, trade-offs

directly or indirectly. It is important toexamine the sector’s interaction in theand complex interlinkages to better support thetransformation needed in the livestock sector
and enhance its contribution to the SDGs.
Dr. Markos Tibbo Dambi
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Linked to goals:+ all 17indirectly

12

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

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13

Championing the specialists who solve the world’s biggest challenges

A trove of information

Helping create efficientWith over 300,000 clinical trials, 400,000 investigator profiles
and 117,000 clinical trial sites, we bring together all the information
customers need to identify qualified investigators, decide whichorganisations to partner with, and prioritize sites which are most
likely to make their trial a success. This data is supplemented by
our Ask the Analyst service, where a team of industry experts help
clients make informed, strategic decisions by finding the most
relevant information and designing effective search strategies.

trials for quicker cures

Amy H. Bu

What it means to haveyour research published

Eilise Norris

Citeline helps customers identify investigators who have the trial
experience they need, which allows them to easily pinpoint
investigators who meet their criteria. Using Citeline, they can also
gain insight into previous, similar trials in specific populations.
This reduces costs, improves the chances of a successful trial,
and accelerates the process of getting new drugs to market –and potentially saving lives.

Research Associate
Informa Intelligence, Boston

Clinical trials are a crucial part of developing new cures. Theyfrequently fail, but the most common cause of a failed trial may
surprise you – pharmaceutical companies simply struggle to enrol
and retain the patients they need.
I witnessed this difficulty first-hand in my previous role, which
made the opportunity to make a difference at Citeline particularly
appealing. I joined the Sitetrove team in 2018, where we help ourclients – often pharmaceutical and biotechnology businesses –streamline clinical trials by providing them with an invaluable
database of information.

It’s easy to assume that for our specialist authors, publishingresearch in our academic journals adds value to their work.
Through the peer review process, their research is validated byother researchers in the same field. We make it easy for others
to discover and cite their research. And we make sure theirresearch is available in perpetuity.

Portfolio Manager, Journals
Taylor & Francis, Oxford

In search of answers

Breakthrough for trials
Andrew Kelly

The feedback we get from customers is overwhelmingly positive.
One Strategic Feasibility Expert from a top-20 pharma businessdelivered this glowing testimonial: “speaking from a position ofa person who is in Sitetrove on a weekly basis, I can undeniably
state that Sitetrove has the most comprehensive collection ofclinical trial investigator data that I have seen anywhere. By far,and without a doubt, the Trialtrove and Sitetrove platform provides
a level of information which in not obtainable in a single platform
offered by other organisations which I have come across.”

Linked to goal:

Portfolio Manager, Journals
Taylor & Francis, Oxford

New books publishedThe results revealed some interesting insights (see chart below).

Making an impact: the real-world effects of publishingin IAPA

7,300

2018

7,100

2017

7,100

Number of e-books to search and download

2017
165

2018
170+

2019
170+

Space across all our exhibitions (m2)2017
no data

14

2018
120K

Used in teaching

Led to future workon the same topic

44%

42%

Used in training
documents

Used in policy
documents

24%

18%

Used in best-practice
documents

31%

Countries sold into

2019

2019
127K

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

2017
1.8m

2018
4.2m

We partnered with the International Association of Impact (IAIA) toinvestigate this. They’re the leading global network in using impact
assessment for informed decision making. We publish their journal,
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal (IAPA), which has a broad
readership including people in universities, government and publicagencies, consultancies and community groups. Together we devised
a survey and sent it to every author who’d been published in IAPA
since 2012.

Connecting authors

IAPA authors see their articles go on to make an impact, both in termsof future academic research and in the real world:

Our reach:But beyond data on citations and downloads, there’s much more to
the impact of publishing research with T&F. We are now extending
the work we do to consider the impact on authors and if it helps
them achieve their aims. This can include areas such as progressing
their careers, gaining funding, building relationships or starting
collaborations. Most importantly, we want to increasingly understandif authors feel their research is reaching the people who need it.

A third of respondents said that being published in IAPA led togreater impact than other journals. We believe this really does show
the value of having the specialist focus and the right audiences.
We also heard that publishing in IAPA helps authors connect
across their community and outside academia. For example,
46% of respondents made connections with researchers in theirown country (and 40% had done so in other countries), while 40%
had been approached for research collaborations as a result of
being published.
Overall, the project has given us and IAIA a deeper understandingof the network, and where we can amplify and promote authors’
research to give it the most impact. Our ambition for 2020 andbeyond is to do similar studies in other areas, starting with thosethat support the UN’s SDGs and the urgent issue of climate change.
By knowing more about the life of research beyond publication,
beyond citations and downloads, we can ensure that specialist
authors in our fields really make an impact.

Following publication in IAPA:
Linked to goals:

46%

Made newconnections withresearchers in theirown country

40%

Made newconnections withresearchers in theirother country

2019
4.6m

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15

Championing the specialists who solve the world’s biggest challenges

Supporting sustainable

Taylor & Francis partnership with

Open Educational Resources supplier), we are bringing a rich bodyof learning content to children the world over – enabling them tointeract, collaborate and learn.

transformation in the

HP and Kortext puts educational

Education insideleather industry

Kortext and HP announced in April 2019 that all HP Windows
Education Edition devices will be pre-installed with the Kortext
reading app, meaning any child using one will have access to a libraryof selected digital textbooks – for free. To date, the Kortext app is
now on some 2.5 million HP laptops.

content at fingertips

Perrine Ardouin

Christoph Chesher

APLF Director

Group Sales Director

Informa Markets, Hong Kong

Taylor & Francis, Oxford

The content library includes textbooks covering a range of subjects
including STEM, as well as some key introductory level texts from
Taylor and Francis that will help English learners find their readinglevel. In addition, teachers can access analytical insights to see how
their students are using the content, helping them refine and support
the children’s learning experiences.

Getting smarter

Fast fashion faces sustainability challenges in some areas but less soin others, such as leather. APLF (Asia Pacific Leather Fair) was voted
the industry’s most important leather event and we’ve found an
important role to play as champions of a material that is sustainable
by nature. Produced by tanners who process hides that would
otherwise be wasted as a by-product of the meat industry, leather
is also long-lasting and bio-degradable.
Championing sustainability has been central to APLF for well overa decade. Most of our conferences, and most new products launchedat the show each year, have sustainability built in. The Leather
Working Group (LWG), who established the industry’s gold, silver
and bronze sustainability ratings for tanneries, host their Annual
Meeting at our show. So does Leather Naturally, an industrial group
we helped found to promote the beauty, durability, versatility and(most importantly) sustainability of leather. We developed theSustainability in the Leather Supply Chain conference, and it’s also
the occasion for the Tannery of the Year Award and gala dinner.

Fashion forward
The industry has come a long way since the LWG began offering
sustainability audits and certification in 2005. Driven by consumers,
brands needed to understand which suppliers met theirrequirements on sustainability in the broadest sense – onenvironmental, human rights and compliance issues. Today, themajority of tanneries in China and other countries in Asia-Pacificregion have upgraded their production. Treatments are increasingly
environmentally friendly, such as vegetable tannins and solvent-freedye, and in some of the most advanced tanneries water discharge
from the tanning process is drinkable!
Reflecting the trends in the global leather industry, in 2018 we
introduced the ‘PPP process’ for all exhibitors – a Profiling andPositioning Procedure that shows our commitment to transparency.
We require every exhibitor to declare their sustainability credentials,
and we include proofs of their certificates in the online showroom.
And every year we continue to invite the technicians and experts
from British Leather Centre to organise training programmes with
us in Hong Kong, where fashion industry professionals can get clued
up on the latest auditing, compliance and certifications.

Setting our sights higher

Taylor & Francis and its partner Kortext, the global digital textbook
and personal study platform, share a common belief – that accessto high quality digital educational resources has the power tofundamentally change children’s lives and support SDG4: Quality
Education. UNESCO says over 600 million school-aged children are
not achieving basic proficiency in reading and maths. The problem,
they say, is mainly down to three common themes – lacking the rightaccess to education, failing to keep children in school and low quality
teaching in the classroom.

Children today are growing up around smart technology – byproviding crucial educational resources with HP, OpenStax andKortext, we hope many more will gain the core skills to participate in
the digital, knowledge-based economy as adults. Indeed, the WorldBank estimates that increasing knowledge through free access toworld-class content could lead to increases in GDP of more than 30%,
at the same time as enhancing vital skills.

Linked to goals:

Taylor and Francis content can help solve some of these problems.
Working with Kortext and its partners (HP, one of the world’s main
manufacturers of laptops for schools, and OpenStax, the leading

Proportion of book titles available as ebooks

How we are tracking our contributions
Number of open
access journals

Number of open accessarticles published

Number of journal
downloads in INASP

We have made it our mission to become the region’s leading
sustainable sourcing platform for the fashion industry – including
non-leather materials. To do that, we’ve set up a Sustainability
Steering Committee to guide our development, comprised of
our exhibitors, brands, research centres and organisations
promoting sustainability.

Linked to goals:

16

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

74%

77%

78%

2017

2018

2019

Proportion of accepted academic articles
from developing countries

2017: 173

2017: 11,073

2017: 1,323,208

2018: 268

2018: 13,500

2018: 1,494,238

2019: 276

2019: 16,700

2019: 1,286,139

35%

35%

38%

2017

2018

2019

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17

Creating diversity
in the gaming industry

Helping ourcustomers makeconnections

Katie Stern
General Manager, Game Group
Informa Tech, San Francisco

The game industry is driven by a global community of specialists
with few opportunities to come together IRL (internet slang for“in real life”); that’s where we come in.
We facilitate the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the video
game industry's premier professional event, championing specialist
game developers and the advancement of their craft.

Our customers are part of many specialist networks and industries
around the globe, and we help them to learn more, know more, anddo more. They come to us because of what the knowledge andnetworks we connect them with can lead to. Our brands bring people
together – experts, buyers, sellers, authors, partners, associations,communities – around a common topic, challenge or even passion.
Whether it’s in person at an event or through our physicaland digital products, we help people working in the same community
collaborate with each other. We believe that the value customers gainfrom connecting with each other more effectively, as a result of theplatforms we provide, helps us keep them coming back. Buildingon that, at our best we hope that our commitment to improving
the products year on year turns them into ambassadors for ourbrands. Done well, it also puts us at the heart of each specialist
community as a valued partner.
As well as being integral to how we thrive as a business, this isa powerful contribution to the global sustainable development
agenda – and particularly to the UN’s SDG17 (on partnerships forsustainable development).
Here, we’ve brought together some of the ways Informa colleagues
are helping customers connect by doing what we do best: creating
opportunities for others to make new connections and strengthen
existing ones.
Our success, now and in the future, depends on how efficiently wecreate the places and ways for learning, knowledge and collaboration
to spark and flourish.

18

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Most developers know the community can feel imposing tooutsiders, especially women and minorities – 75% of the audience
identify as male, and around 25% as female or another gender
identity. We feel a duty to the industry, and everyone connected
to it, to ensure all attendees feel welcome and have a seat aroundthe table.

Know your code

That starts with our code of conduct, which invites all attendees
to help realise a safe and positive experience for all, regardlessof gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity or religion.
And during five days of education, inspiration and networking,we put that approach into action in the way we curate the space,
the content and the speakers.
We fund a Low Income Pass Lottery, giving people who would
otherwise not be able to attend the chance to win a complimentarypass. We provide Mamava Lactation Pods and childcare with ourpartner KiddieCorp, to make sure parents are included. And
attendees can pick up stickers with preferred pronouns (he, they,she, etc) when they arrive.

Amplifying diverse voices

We’re very thankful for our voluntary and diverse advisory boardthat guides content selection to ensure it meets the needs ofmany groups from the industry. Last year we featured sessions onaccessibility in game design and representation in character design.
And we run hands-on training with industry partners to boost newvoices that will change the face of games, VR & AR.
Our Speaker Diversity Initiative helps to remove financial barriers
by prioritizing honorariums for diverse speakers. We also have
33 not-for-profit partner organisations who all go througha rigorous selection to ensure a broad reach and purpose thatgrows our community.
Our session evaluations of this segment of content are proofof success, with the diversity and accessibility sessions almost
always in our top-scoring content. It gives us confidence that thisis something our community wants to level up on, and there’s
a key role for us to play until it becomes the norm.

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19

Helping our customers make connections

Stuart:It’s great to hear that the progress we’re making on sustainable
events is in line with market expectations. We’re all motivated tolead the way by listening to the market and responding to provide
a really good product and Explori’s insights are definitely helping
keep us on track.

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INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

27,00030,0002019+5.8m

What are our customers are telling us+5.5m

People attending
our events

Percentage of events attendees who agree and strongly agree that it matters to them thatevents are run in a responsible and sustainable way.
2019

48%

51%

2018

54%

2017

Agree

36%

84%

32%

83%

28%

82%

Strongly Agree

In 2019:

2/3
of events attendees agree
or strongly agree that theevent is meeting their
expectations in that it is
run in a responsible andsustainable way

Journal articles
downloaded

6/10
customers agree orstrongly agree that
attending the event will
make them more effectivein their job as a result of
networking and knowledge
they gained

7/10
customers agree orstrongly agree that
attending the event
has made them moreable to address the big
challenges their sector
is seeking to solve

2019

Yes – there’s no question that the landscape is changing. We’re all
becoming more and more aware of the positive and less desirable
impacts of events. Whilst we know events create a lot of good,attendees and exhibitors are putting pressure on events organisers
to be more transparent about their environmental impact and how
they’re managing it. And they’ll start voting with their feet. Our
industry insights study tells us that around a third of exhibitors
say they would consider not exhibiting at an unsustainable show,
perhaps because they are concerned about the impact on theirbrand. And attendees too are now telling us they prefer sustainable
shows, with 78% saying they expect events to have a “responsible
approach to sustainability”.

of exhibitors say they are taking
steps to exhibit more sustainably(source: Explori)

+200m

Mark:

75%

2019

Informa Connect, London

That really is great news. And for Informa Connect, we believe thequality of our events keeps our customers returning. This includes
their ability to meet the growing interest and expectation forresponsibly run, sustainable events.

of visitors say that it’s important thata trade show displays a strong commitment
to sustainability (source: Explori)

2018

Director of Research & Insight

Stuart:78%

2017

It’s great to be part of the team. And because we work withlots of other organisers and major associations, we’re able tobenchmark Informa’s performance against others. That’s how we
see and share market trends. For instance, the recent data from2019 suggests that the desire of business people around the world
to seek out face-to-face interactions is growing. So, the better the
networking and connections made at events, the higher attendees’
satisfaction. It’s the thing people return for. They want the humaninteraction to reignite and sustain the digital relationships andrecognise events as the most effective platform to do this.

2018

Mark:

The even better news is, it’s true for exhibitors too – we asked
exhibitors how events compare to other channels for building brandtrust with their communities, customers and markets. They rank
events at #1.

Stuart Corke

38,000Today it feels like Explori are an extended part of the team.
And they’ve played a really important part in building Informa’s
customer-centric culture and given us a common language forunderstanding events.

+150m

Explori, London

Subscriptions to
our intelligenceproducts

2018Founder and CEO

our contributions:+2mMark Brewster

Explori’s platform was a game changer because it enabled us tostart creating a consistent, joined-up data set across hundredsof our conferences. Surveys go out immediately after the eventand data is available at all times, for all users, and updated live as
the response builds. This immediacy means we can make productdecisions much faster and compare KPI’s across the business.

2017

We listened in when Mark Brewster caught up
with Stuart, to discuss Informa Connect’s work with
Explori, a research business specialising in customer
experience and benchmarking for the events
industry. We’ve worked with them since 2016.

How we are tracking

Across the industry, attendees want more sustainable events

No data reported

customers with Explori

Stuart:2017

Listening to our

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21

Helping our customers make connections

Creative diversity in craft

Janice Leung
Director, One Of A Kind
Informa Connect, Toronto

Since 1975, One Of A Kind (OOAK) has been connecting makers andartisans to people in search of meaningful gifts. We have a very
loyal community of attendees and exhibitors, many of whom havebeen coming to the show for decades. People come from all sorts
of different backgrounds, but it’s the appreciation of creativity
and craft that brings them together.

A path less travelled

In the summer of 2018, we did a lot of soul-searching about our
show’s reason for being – we reached the conclusion that ourcommunity is what makes us special. We’re continually inspiredby the passion and courage that drives each person to make theircraft into a living, and by the conscious consumers who search for’storied’ gifts or items that are made in a way that aligns with theirpersonal values.
We also identified that diversity is absolutely key to the variety
of beautiful work that our community creates and appreciates.
That’s why we’re so focused on supporting people in their journeyto the show – whether as visitors or exhibitors.
To help invite new people into our community, this year we
introduced a new option for visitors to purchase a “pay it forward”
ticket for an additional $10. This ticket provided an opportunity
for an immigrant new to Toronto to attend the show for free.
At the 2019 Winter Show, we gifted over 100 tickets to the show.
We believe this helps keep our community vibrant and brings
together people from across the city with a shared love of craft.

Craft champions

Championing makers starts with our event team, who are justso invested in helping people exhibit at the show. We reallyenjoy investing the time to coach and mentor our exhibitors,
advising on how to perfect their booth, engage customers or
refine their sales pitch. We know that doing the show is an
important fixture in our exhibitors’ calendar, which can makeor break their business, and it’s reflected in our team’s
compassion to help them get the most from it.
We also know that the scale of that investment required, intime, spend and stock, is significant for some small businesses.
To help improve accessibility, and bring new ideas to the event,
we have developed scholarship options for new exhibitors
as well as options for booth sharing and marketplace areas,
offering a foot in the door for first timers who otherwise might
not be able to attend. It’s a testament to our community’s
shared values that every year we bring around 20% first-time
exhibitors to each One Of A Kind Show.
For the first time in 2019, we also ran a section for small
business ideas from a local elementary school. This saw savvy
13-year-olds selling and marketing their work and getting
feedback on their products. It’s really satisfying to give young
entrepreneurs a learning opportunity like that.

These individuals are all on limited income
and would not otherwise be able to afford
the luxury of a ticket to the One Of A Kind
Show. For our English Language Program
students, we are excited to expose themto Canadian artisans and learn more about
the abundant, creative talent from across ourcountry. Again, you have our gratitude.
Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto

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INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

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23

Helping our customers make connections

Accelerating African-led
Tom CuthellTech for Good

Portfolio Director

Helping sustainable
brands inspire others

Informa Tech, London

Jessica Rubin
Over the last 20 years, AfricaCom has been the place where tensof thousands of people come together to design and build Africa’s
digital future, spurring on economic empowerment and social
mobility through digital tech. Summed up in our motto ‘Tech
for Good’, this gives the whole team a real sense of purpose.

The Africa50 Innovation Challenge has thepotential to connect tens of millions of people
with the internet in Rwanda and beyond.
The partnership with Informa’s specialists
and their networks helped us make thisplatform possible and reach a broader
audience of the leading tech businesses inAfrica and beyond. The project opens up the
potential for more investments being madeand many millions more Africans joining
the digital economy over the next few years.
Terry Waghorn,
CEO and Founder, Dysruptus

Senior Director – Content Marketing
Informa Markets, Boulder

In 2019, we brought together more people, with more specialist
knowledge, to help our largest African event have evenmore impact.

Inspiring gender diversity

We want to promote more inclusivity in Africa’s digital economy,
so we started a number of programmes to attract and support
more women entering the tech industry. We invited our large
corporate and investor partners to get involved too.
Our new programme of free content and networking under thebanner of ‘Women in Tech’ gives a voice to African gender diversity
champions to inspire others, in person and online. This included
a dedicated space to attract investment for women-led startups,
and a series of keynote panels from women leaders from Google,
Microsoft and others. The message wasn’t only that gender
diversity is positive and important, but that it’s also a proven way
to enable organisations to be more innovative, support growth andgain competitive advantage. The sessions were hugely inspirational,
and even got a rare cheer alongside the usual applause.
Many sessions were created in partnership with local organisations
who are already doing great work and we’re really pleased to raise
their profile. For example, we’ve grown our partnership with
Code4CapeTown, which helps young women equip themselveswith the skills to be successful leaders in tech. Together we held
an innovation competition involving more than 40 local students
who developed solutions for Africa’s digital skills gap. Each received
mentoring from senior speakers at AfricaCom before pitching theirideas back to a packed audience on our innovation stage.

New Hope has been a valuable
partner, helping us craft and tell oursustainability story to the U.S. naturals
product industry through an effective
content marketing program.
Alison Castillo, Unilever Industry
Relations & Sustainable Living

Since joining Informa 11 years ago, I’ve watched how we haveincreasingly provided the platform for others to inspire change– not least when it comes to sustainability. Today at Informa
Health & Nutrition, I help companies in the natural products
industry tell their stories, to grow businesses and bring more
health to more people.
It’s not surprising to me that a recent study found that 78%
of consumers believe it is no longer acceptable for companies
to just make money. There’s an expectation that companies
should positively impact society as well.

The pillar of purpose

As well as price, quality of product and convenience, consumers
increasingly care about sustainability and the mission of a brand.
And it’s a massive opportunity for those brands that do it well.
Unilever understood this when I first met with them in 2016.
Some of their brands had exhibited at New Hope Network’s
85,000+ person event Natural Products Expo West in the pastand they saw us as an important partner. We act as an amplifierto their rallying call by creating content marketing that builds
trust in their products, with stories that promote sustainable
best practices to other companies, retailers and industry
influencers that engage with our market networks
in various ways.

Spreading good deeds

The message is that there are companies making productsthat are not only good for you, but also good for the planet andsociety. For example, Unilever brands like Pukka Herbs donate
at least 1% of all sales to environmental projects through 1%
for the Planet, and Growing Roots donates a staggering 50%
of profits to urban agriculture organisations. Culture Republickis supporting local arts with 10% of profits, while Schmidt’s andLove Beauty and Planet products are proudly vegan and cruelty
free, a crucial factor for their customers.
And at Natural Products Expo West, we’ve teamed up with
Unilever to offer education sessions on sustainability for otherbusinesses in the natural products industry. Independent andlarge retailers get involved, which shows how big and small
companies can work together. We further build out this story
through a range of digital content tools. Ultimately, we’reshowing how sustainable, mission-driven business models
are cultivating health for people and the planet, growing theirbusinesses and defining a new collaboration economy.

Creating a challenge for Africa

This year we also developed the idea of ‘Innovation Challenges’ –a way of identifying the most disruptive and game-changing
technologies that have the potential to rapidly accelerate progress
towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

24

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

For our first foray into these Challenges, we helped form a coalition
between Informa Tech, innovation platform Dysruptus and theAfrica50 Development Bank. Our collective aim was to findcombinations of solutions which can significantly increase accessto affordable and reliable high speed internet in Africa, helping
reach the 60% of Africans who don’t have access to all the benefits
the internet can bring. We know that higher internet penetration
can support growth in GDP, living standards and many other
SDGs and we look forward to the results of the work in 2020.

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25

Managingsustainability
across all
our events

Level 1The Fundamentals
A 12-point checklist of key sustainability aspects that
we believe all of our events should be implementing.
See following page for details.

Level 2
Sustainable Toolkit and Self Assessment
Lucille Ryan
Sustainability Manager

Our library of resources, toolkits and self-assessmentscore cards guide events as they go further and identify
key areas for improvement.

– EMEA
Informa Group, London

Level 3

We want to make running sustainable events good forour business and good for all our stakeholders. Attendees,
investors and colleagues are telling us that sustainability –in economic, social and environmental terms – is somethingthat’s not just a nice-to-have, but a necessary part ofour success.
In 2019 we launched our new Sustainable Events Management
System, a framework to inspire and enable all event to enhancetheir sustainability.

Sustainable Improvement Plan
50 events every year will work with the Group
Sustainability team to create a Sustainable
Improvement Plan (SIP).

Ca
rb

Level 4
Sustainable Leaders
Events that graduate from their SIP and deliver something
truly unique will be our Sustainability Leaders.

nt

The launch of Informa’s new sustainable
event management system breaks new
ground in the events industry.

on

an
d

Wa
ste

Pro

e
em
r
cu

It helps events work at four levels of engagement
Within Informa, the response so far has far exceeded
expectations – over 300 events have already committed
to the Fundamentals for 2020 and around 50 events areworking with the sustainability team on their Sustainable
Improvement Plan. Externally, the response has been exciting
too, with the Fundamentals helping a shift in the wider events
industry. The Association of Event Organisers (AEO) is adapting
our 12 Fundamentals for their members as well as those in the
Association of Event Venues (AEV) and Event Supplier andServices Association (ESSA).
We’re taking the lead on this because we know it’swhat our audience wants, with more than 80% of attendees
saying sustainability is important to them. It’s also evident
that events which focus on becoming more sustainable benefit
from increased innovation, cost savings, enriched content,
higher customer satisfaction and enhanced reputation.
The reception so far suggests we’ve created somethingthat really helps the industry move forward.

26

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Case study: Vitafoods Europe 2019
gains ISO sustainability recognition

Chris LeeManaging Director, Health &Nutrition Europe
Informa Markets, London

Vitafoods Europe is one of Informa’s largest and newest events tobe awarded the ISO 20121 Event Sustainability Management System
certificate – external recognition of the way we manage and improve
the sustainability of our events.
It’s our mission to shape the food industry for optimal health throughour content and communities, contributing to the SDG3: Healthy
Lives and Wellbeing. But we also want to run our event in a way that’s
healthy for our attendees, the community and environment.

We encourage people to discuss and debate during our
educational talks and networking events, such as the newDiversity & Inclusion Roundtable, or the 5km run and Yoga Wellness
session. We also work with partners who share our commitment
to environmental sustainability by powering the event withrenewable energy and introducing new regulations for building
stands to encourage exhibitors to move away from using
disposable materials.

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27

Managing sustainability across all our events

Setting the standard
with the Fundamentals
The Fundamentals are a 12-point checklist that gives all events
a way to measure themselves against our stakeholders’ minimum
expectations around sustainability. It enables them to trackprogress, share stories of best practice and see how they
compare to other events.
The framework was designed to give specific direction at the sametime as providing freedom for events to adapt for their markets
and their local community. As a business, it provides us witha lever and guide to help hundreds of our events, big and small,
improve their sustainability over time.
Teams use the Fundamentals to assess their event against eachof the 12 criteria, giving themselves a score and highlighting
what they can improve on. They also have a library of resources,
templates and guidance to call upon to help their implementationand progress for the next event.
Around 60 events, ranging from Amsterdam to Cairo, Shanghai
to Vancouver, submitted their Fundamentals score for 2019.
And over 300 of our events are already using the Fundamentals
in preparation for 2020.
Our ambition is for all Informa’s events to adopt the Fundamentals
within a year, and within the next two event cycles we think they
can achieve full points. Over time, particularly as we progress
towards our 2025 targets, we’ll increase the level of ambition
within the Fundamentals to move all of our events towards
greater sustainability. We believe there are so many opportunities
to engage with customers, develop new revenue streams, savemoney and create engaging content – by leading on sustainability
in our industry, and theirs.

>300 events
already committed to theFundamentals in 2020

>60 events
already submitted scores in thefirst four months

Inspiring

Running an

Running

Sustainable

Environmentallya SociallyDevelopment

Responsible Event

Responsible Event

PurposeCarbon and waste

Community and Wellbeing01

For sustainability to be included in the content
of the event.

02

For the event to have a purposeful partnershipwith a not-for-profit.

Stakeholder engagement05

For all lighting specified by Informa to be LEDs,
and for the venue’s lights and air conditioning
to be used efficiently.

06

For the event to have minimal to no waste generationfrom areas of the show built by Informa, and for the
carpet to be reused or recycled.

Procurement

09

For the event to have at least two initiatives which
support the local community around the event venue.

10

For the event to have at least three initiatives which
enhance wellbeing, equality, accessibility and respect
for all.

Governance03

For there to be six significant sustainability
communications.

07

For at least three items procured for the eventto have enhanced sustainability credentials.

11

For the events to be compliant with Informa’s
Health and Safety Guidelines.

04

For the event team to be engaged with sustainability,
and it to be a part of event decisions.

08

For there to be at least three ways in which thesustainability of the food and beverage (F&B) of theevent has been enhanced.

12

For event sustainability data to be submitted within
six weeks of the event.

Case study: Developing industry standards
for rating sustainable events

Bryan Lazzaro
Sustainability Manager –Americas
Informa Group, New YorkDeveloping our own management system helps events progressin a structured and focused way towards being more sustainable,
concentrating on what matters to them. Our events are ranked ininternal league tables to encourage a competitive spirit.
But we also value external benchmarks. Working with a steeringgroup from the Events Industry Council’s (EIC) sustainability working
group, we contributed to the development of the EIC’s Sustainable
Event Standard.

world’s first events to be externally certified to this new standard.
Natural Products Expo East and Greenbuild both gained a Platinum
rating, the highest possible standard. ABX, an event that only became
part of Informa in 2017, gained the Silver standard, which is a great
achievement after just one year of work. It’s a testament to the hard
work and commitment of these teams that they’ve been recognisedwith these awards.

Whereas ISO20121 certifies that the event’s management system is
effective in driving improvements in sustainability, the EIC Standards
score how sustainable the event is against their criteria. I’m reallypleased to say that three of Informa’s events are among the28

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29

Success is a partnership

We know that mutually beneficial
partnerships are absolutely integral to our
long-term success as a business. Working
in partnership is also clearly an importantpart of how the global community will build
a more sustainable future, highlighted
clearly by this being one of the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG17).
There are many ways to make a positive
difference in the world, and at Informa
we are always mindful of our impacts
on the places where we operate andthe communities around them. Manyof our brands have worked closely withstakeholders such as cities and local
charities for years, but we’ve seen
increasing returns when relationships
become partnerships with clear, sharedgoals that use the unique skills of
everyone involved.
No one is better placed than our colleagues
to identify and create fruitful partnerships,
and in 2019 we saw some great examples
of local or market-specific partnershipsthat are enabling us and others to flourish.
That’s why local offices, events and brands
are all encouraged to develop their own
relationships and collaborations.
But there are also some challenges that
require businesses like ours to leverage
our reach and scale – in fact, there arechallenges so big that they require
everyone – businesses, governments,
NGOs, customers, suppliers – to work
together to solve them. As part of ourFasterForward priorities of being an Impact
Multiplier and building Sustainability Inside,
we aim to establish more of these kindsof multi-lateral partnerships and we shareearly progress in some of these stories.
Whether it’s through partnerships large
or small, we know that our knowledge
and networks are the most valuable thing
we can offer.

Partnering for a more

Helping thesustainable events

food industry

How we are tracking our contributions:industry (SEBIG)

connect

Colleague fundraising induced

2017
£82k

Melinda Kendall

Rose Chitanuwat

SVP of SustainabilityGroup Brand Director – ASEAN

Freeman, Dallas

Informa Markets, Bangkok

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

2019
£305k

% of colleagues volunteering

Some challenges can only be overcome byworking together

Many organisations in the events industry have made good
progress on sustainability goals by acting individually. But there aremany areas of sustainability that would see the biggest improvement
through cooperation – a joint approach to changing our industry’s
embedded practices. An agreed vision of a sustainable future would
also give clear signals to the supply chain and help us all maximise
the return on investment in sustainability.
We were thrilled at Freeman when Informa reached out to talk about
an industry consortium to specifically tackle the big challenges insustainability that we can only tackle together. As industry leaders,with different but complementary roles, we knew we could effectively
inspire the industry to work together to create change. We alsoboth recognised the opportunity to be leaders addressing emerging
opportunities to improve our industry’s impacts, helping us stayahead of key trends and identify new ways of doing things.
In August 2018, we convened more than 20 sustainability leadersfrom global events organisations to imagine what the futureof sustainable events could look like. Of the 25 ideas that we
generated, four were clearly opportunities that could only beachieved together. These became the focus of the newly formed
Sustainable Events: Big Initiatives Group (SEBIG):
1. Industry-wide materiality analysis to prioritise future focus areas
2. Create standardised data exchange tools between venues
and stakeholders
3. Work to eliminate single-use plastics from the events industry
4. Work to find solutions to landfilled carpet, vinyl andplastic sheeting
In 2019, 10 members of SEBIG crowdfunded the largest evermateriality study into the environmental and social impacts of theevents industry. This will help us understand where to focus further
projects by giving us a more complete view of the impacts of ourindustry and the $1.5 trillion of economic value it creates each year.
All of these aims require collaboration between the different partsof the events industry to be successful. It has been incredibly
encouraging to see our industry partners and peers from so manydifferent organisations, representing facilities, event organisers andsuppliers, see the value of this group and commit to work together
to enhance the sustainability of our industry.

30

2018
£191k

Food Ingredients (FI) Asia is the number one meeting
place for Southeast Asia’s food industry, gathering leading
ingredient suppliers, distributors and manufacturers.
We look at everything from how the region can be more
self-sufficient on food to how the industry innovates around
locally grown ingredients.

2019

14% 1,577 people

2018

15% 1,729 people

2017

9%

689 people

Company donations1

Company donations (cash)
Volunteer programme spend(including value of staff time)
Donations in kind1

Serving the industry

For large numbers of small businesses in our industry, oneof the most challenging things is working out the processof getting their product approved for sale or export. The
regulators, Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and few of government agencies such as Thailand Institutionof Science Technology and Research (TISTR), were also finding
it difficult to connect with all the new entrants to the market
and ensure food is safe.

2019 total£1,630,000£644,0002018 total£1,409,000£354,000

As the industry’s convenor, we saw an opportunity to partnerwith these groups and invited the FDA and TISTR to take spaceat our show where they could engage with businesses to help
them understand the process. The result has been hugely
successful. By creating space to connect, we help them work
better together and help make the whole industry more efficient.

£376,000£424,000

Blossoming partnershipAs a result of this growing trust, the FDA invited us to join
a community project with them to support deprived schools
in rural Thailand. We brought together colleagues, suppliers
and other partners to visit the schools and run education
sessions. The children there are the future of our country
and subjects like English, computing and self-sufficiency
helps share opportunities with those who are at risk of being
left behind. It’s been a great source of happiness to makea difference to the students there and give them aspiration.
This growing relationship with the FDA now means they bringus into consultative conversations about food waste andsmall business support in Thailand, which is an exciting newrole for us as advisors in the industry. They are also backing
our invitation to the FDAs from other countries in Asia to join
our future shows, which will only bring further benefits to ourindustry in the region.

2017 total£685,000£411,000£678,000£562,000£235,000£39,000
1

Includes all known donations in kind

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31

Success is a partnership

Partnerships
around the world
Our teams and brands choose to support charitable groups
and not-for-profits all around the world. Our offices choose
their local charities aligned with what colleagues care about,and support these through programmes such as Walk theWorld (pages 40-41) and our enhanced volunteering anddonations (page 38) benefits.
However, much of the value we donate to charities every
year comes from the partnerships between our brands andcharities relevant to their industry. Across hundreds ofdifferent brands, we provide partnerships, profile andopportunities for charities to benefit from the knowledge
and networks we have. In return, we benefit from their own
knowledge and networks, as well as the chance to show ourcommitment to issues that are important within each of our
specialist markets.
Here are just a few examples.

Creating magic at Licensing Expo
At Licensing Expo, which connects the world’s
most influential entertainment, character, artand corporate brand owners and agents, wepartnered with a group called Magic Wheelchair,a non-profit that transforms children’s
wheelchairs into epic costumes. At this year’sshow they created a My Little Pony chariot
wheelchair for a six-year-old girl. The big reveal
took place at the expo, which included
a 10-minute talk from the show director andthe girl’s family. It was an emotional occasion
for everyone in attendance. Magic Wheelchairalso had their own booth and they reported
a high level of engagement throughout the day.
A lot of the children’s and movie brands there
were eager to get involved.

Amnesty for unwanted books

AI Summit champions diverse development

Every year we end up with a quantity of books thebusiness no longer needs. This includes advance,
gratis or reference copies, books from acquisitions
after we have archived the content digitally, andbooks from storage that need to be cleared out.
For over eight years now, we’ve partnered withAmnesty International, providing our excess
books for their annual book sale in London, andto their warehouse for distribution through theirsecond-hand bookshops and Amazon marketplace.
We have also donated more than 65,000 books in
the last two years to BookAid, who distribute thosebooks to restock libraries after natural disasters
or conflict in vulnerable areas of the world.

Building ethical AI needs developers from all backgrounds, yet only 12%of AI developers are women. We partner with DevelopHer, the UK’s largest
non-profit dedicated to elevating women in tech, to run ‘How to get into AI?’
workshops for 100 DevelopHer members aged mostly 16-25.

Kerry Induchny
Production Archivist
Taylor & Francis, Oxford

Amanda Cioletti

Sally Freeman, Co-Founder, DevelopHer said “It has been such a privilege towork with Informa for the past two years. High on the agenda was the needfor the female voice to be built into algorithms to make diverse and inclusive
platforms. Informa also generously gifted over 100 tickets to make theincredible knowledge and resource that the AI Summit delivers accessible
to a broad community.”
Through this partnership, Informa can engage the industry on a topic that's
key to its future development. It also helps us engage wider audiences. We’llbe expanding our work to four events in 2020, as well as hosting DevelopHer
meet-ups in Spring at Informa offices.

Elliot Wellsteed-Crook
VIP Delegate Recruitment Exec
Informa Tech, London

Event & Content Director
Informa Markets, Santa Monica

Training with the Dubai Youth Council

Vitamin Angels against malnutrition
Vitamin Angels is a charity working to solve the#1 cause of preventable child deaths. They provide
lifesaving vitamins to over 70 million mothers andchildren at risk of malnutrition. In 2019 alone, we
donated funds to help them reach over 200,000
children. But we aim to do more than that – bygiving them booths which enabled Vitamin Angels
to reach over 100,000 attendees, and by hosting
an event that brought together 120 influential
CEOs from the natural products industry, we are
seeking to raise their profile and, with a united
voice, assert that health is a human right.

Jon Benninger
VP Health & Nutrition
Informa Markets, Phoenix

Solutions for food waste
According to the UN, 1.3 billion tons of food are
discarded around the world every year, while
820 million people starve. Comida Invisível isa UN-certified social startup and app in Brazil thatenables businesses to easily donate food waste.
We teamed up with them for Fispal Food Service
2019 to raise awareness about unnecessary waste
at work, at home and in our lives. All the food andorganic waste produced at the show was collectedby Comida Invisível, composted and transformed
into fertiliser to produce food that was donated toneedy families. They also had a booth where they
offered free consultancy, and we distributedorganic fertiliser samples to our attendees inexchange for their badges at the end.

Informa Connect provides over 800 training programmes,
to 8000 delegates, every year. But we know that our training
can also help younger people who might not traditionallyhave access to the right skills to thrive in their workplaces
and become the leaders of tomorrow.
We’ve created a new partnership with the Dubai YouthCouncil to offer free training courses for Emirati youth
on soft skills development.
The first workshop was fully booked within four hoursof advertising on Instagram, attracting over 70 young
people to promote cross-cultural understanding, boost
their communication skills and train their brains for highperformance output.
We trialled new interactive exercises on a live digitalplatform where participants used their smartphones
to answer polls and share their experiences.
Feedback was really positive and it’s also helped us develop
new content that can engage a younger audience at ourwider events.

Hanisha Kumar

Clelia Iwaki

Marketing Manager – Training

Show Director

Informa Connect, Dubai

Campaigning for car safety
In China, tens of thousands of children are
injured each year because they do not sit
in a safety seat while in the car. The team at
Children- Baby-Maternity Expo partnered withSafe Kids Worldwide (a non-profit organisation
working to prevent these injuries), China
Children and Teenagers’ Fund, and Capital
Institute of Pediatrics, to create a campaign
urging parents to make sure that babies sit inappropriate seats. The campaign included
videos, posters, social media and news reports.
It produced a total of 2,100 original videos andillustrations as well as news coverage across
100 media platforms, reaching almost
50 million people.

Shuang Liang
Social Media Executive
Informa Markets, Hangzhou

Informa Markets, São Paulo32

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33

Success is a partnership

Measuring value creation for cities and attendees

A year of investment in Health, Safety and Security
Steve Dyson

can enable events like Vitafoods to estimate a selection of the key
economic, social and environmental values they create. It gave me
confidence that these had been developed in partnership with Little
Blue Research, an independent impact valuation consultancy. I could
see that a clear understanding of the values created for Geneva andour attendees helps cement long-term commercial partnerships anddemonstrates return on investment by those groups.

Daniela Elia
Vitafoods Head of Marketing
Informa Markets, London

Vitafoods Europe brings 25,000 industry experts together every
year to help shape the food industry to create optimal health andnutrition through science and innovation. We foster relationships
and support knowledge sharing for specialists all across the industry
who are looking to connect and learn about the future of thenutraceutical industry.
Sustainability has become increasingly important to our industry.
We’ve spent the last three years building a portfolio of activities andcommitments to help our customers understand what the collective
priorities are on sustainability and find new sources of solutions andinnovation to address them.
But we’ve also been partners with the city of Geneva for more than
two decades, bringing hundreds of thousands of new visitors to thecity over the life of the event. This has a huge positive impact on thelocal economy.
Reading last year’s sustainability report, I learned that Informa’s
ongoing development of a set of tools and common methodologies

Head of Group HSS
Informa Group, London

The results show a high level of value created for our host city
including local economic benefits from visitor spend and our spend
on local suppliers as well. It also shows a lot of value created in thevital nutraceutical industry. To make sure we didn’t just focus on thepositives, we also sought to value the environmental impacts fromcarbon emissions using estimated costs of carbon required toachieve the Paris Agreement.
It’s important for us to consider as many aspects of the impacts
as possible, particularly the largest ones, and we’ve shown therelative sizes of them in the diagram. This gives us a really good
indication of where we create even more value for attendees andour host city whilst improving our contribution to climate change.
We’re also using what we learned about the tool to help the Group
Sustainability team improve the model and method, including addingin estimates of other impacts such as waste and spend on standcontractors by exhibitors.

Policies that matter
Caroline Bland
Senior Compliance Manager
Informa Group, London

Summary of the relative scale of selected impacts for Vitafoods*
Visitor spend

Spend on local suppliers

Business generated

Lead acquisition

Free seminars

Environmental impact

020

Savings with acquiring new leads
40

60

our contributions:2019 has seen much progress in HSS, including the centralisationof incident report at a Group level to give us a clearer view of ourperformance and where further work is needed.

+600

We’ve also updated our policies including the Health and Safety Policy
to reflect recent changes in our business and expectations. More than
600 colleagues were trained in the Informa safety operating model andwe’re developing a new HSS e-learning course for all colleagues.

Over 600
colleagues
trained in safety
operating model

We established a new Business Resilience Council responsible for helping
us adequately plan and respond to any emergency and crisis situations
that we might face as a global business – whether it be regional tensions,civil unrest, pandemics, extreme weather events or cyber security
threats. In early 2020, this group has been helping us respond andmanage the situation from COVID-19 as it develops.

Quantifying these impacts in financial terms also allows us tounderstand the net benefit arising from an event, taking into accountmany of the different impacts of the event.

How we are tracking

This year, we’ve focused on engaging with our significantly expanded
global community. Our 12 Global Policies that sit at the heart of ourcompliance programme were revised, including our Sanctions, Anti
Bribery & Corruption, and Diversity & Inclusion policies. We also createda new ‘Speak Up’ policy, setting out our commitment to support
colleagues who report concerns about any behaviours they observe.
Our Code of Conduct was completely rewritten in 2019 to align with
the Informa Constitution. The new Code sets out our focus on doing
business in the way that is best and most sustainable for us and forour partners, customers and communities. In 2020, we will publish
the Code and roll out new training for all colleagues. The Group andDivisional Compliance teams also engaged with selected teams inhigher risk locations, providing face to face training on anti-corruption,
sanctions and data privacy.

For more, see
informa.com/hss

Nearly1,000
people havecompleted
our Modern
Slavery training
For more, see
informa.com/
humanrights

We also completed a Group-level Human Rights risk review anddeveloped a new Human Rights policy to reflect our organisation’s
ongoing commitment to respecting internationally recognised humanrights standards, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights: thenew policy is scheduled to be launched in 2020.

80

Estimated scale ofvalue to Geneva

Responsible tax
Estimated value
to exhibitors

Nick Perkins
Head of Tax
Informa Group, London

Currently estimatednegative value of carbon
emissions from the top
5 aspects of the show’s
carbon emissions

Paying tax is an important part of our contribution to the societiesin which we operate. Our taxes help governments provide vital
services and insfrastructure, which we in turn rely on to run ourbusiness successfully.
The Group’s total tax contribution was £375m which includes £165m
of taxes borne by the Group and £210m of taxes collected on behalfof governments.

£375m
Total tax contribution
in 2019

22.8%
Statutory effective
tax rate in 2019
For more, see
informa.com/tax*As with any impact modelling, there is a degree of assumption and extrapolation. These numbers should be taken as an indication of relative
impact rather than absolutely precise measurements.

34

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

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35

OUR
COLLEAGUE S ’
SHAREDCULTURE

It’s the shared culture and attitudes that turn individualcolleagues into Informa’s combined successes. Together
we make Informa what it is. Colleagues are the engine thatdrives growth, create innovation, grow our relationships
and guide our impacts on the world. We are at our bestwhen we each have the freedom to realise our individual
personal and professional ambitions.
Our culture is one whole made up of many different
businesses, divisions and offices, but together we have thescale to help our customers create positive changes in theirmarkets. While scale is powerful. We also strongly believe inthe value of diversity and think it’s important that colleagues
around the world can equally contribute, be heard, andhopefully be inspired.

36

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

To do this, we promote a supportive, diverse and inclusive
environment in which colleagues can use their energy
and ambition to make a meaningful difference at work
and within the community.
We want to work in a culture where colleagues feel free
to do things better, with fewer barriers – to bring theirwhole selves into the office and know how everything we
do fits into the bigger Informa picture. Around the businessin 2019, we can see some great examples of local officeand team cultures that are uniquely themselves, but areclearly part of the Informa team, working together for thesame purpose.
This year as a Group we took more steps towards making
it a reality for everyone – so that wherever they are, people
feel a part of their teams and the wider Informa. We believe
this is good for our business too because people who areempowered and fulfilled contribute far more to making
Informa a successful, sustainable business.

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37

Our colleagues’ shared culture

Creating an even more engaging

Launching AllInforma Rainbow:

and rewarding place to work

our LGBTQI+ network

Fiona Gibson

Maxwell Healey

Community Programme Manager

Operating Plan Project Manager

Informa Group, London

Taylor & Francis, Oxford(2018: 82%)(2018: 79%)

Co
l

2

53%

59%

41%

Male

:5

£2.9m

2017

£2.5m

Colleague turnover

26%

2018

26%

2017

24%
Turnover for all businesses

Average sickness absence per colleague (days)

70%

Leadershipg

r s pli: 6 0% 20 17: 6 0 %2018

Absenteeism%
2 01 8£2.7m

Voluntary turnover30%

t o f p ro m o t i o n s

20 1

2019

3.3

2018

3.0

2017

2.2

22.3%

62%
nde

2019

2019

47%

38%

30%

Ge

Investment in formal training programmes

rou
2018:
3
p
2
%
2
201
7: 2 019
7%

70%

19

Looking ahead, I’m excited about AllInforma Rainbow’s future.
Not only will we continue to support current networks and facilitate
the launch of new ones, but we will also continue to raise awarenessof diversity and inclusion and the benefits it can bring to both ourbusiness and customers.

9%

22

Activity has been varied across the networks. Our Milton Park andDallas offices held diversity training, while our Singapore officeheld a panel discussion on the value of diversity in the workplace.
Colleagues in New York held a red ribbon sale for World AIDS Day,
while our Melbourne office made the T&F repository of HIV and
AIDS content free to access for two months. In London, AllInforma
Rainbow has run a series of diversity and inclusion-themed lunch
and learn sessions in the different offices and held a charity bakesale, raising money for a local LGBTQIA+ homeless charity.

a2019
11,296

Spend on training

All
ma
n
201
8: 5 age
4% m
20 en
17 t

9
01
s 2 : 56%e
gu 0172018
11,197

1%

AllInforma Rainbow launched in June 2019, an historically significant
time for the LGBTQIA+ community demarcating the 50th anniversaryof the Stonewall Riots. June is also Pride month, a time when
LGBTQIA+ communities are celebrated in many places around theworld. Run by local champions, AllInforma Rainbow is a network forcolleagues who identify as LGBTQIA+, as well as anyone who
supports or wants to learn more learn more about the community.
The response since we launched it has been fantastic. We havechampions spanning all divisions and have active networks in eightlocations on four continents. As each network is governed locally,colleagues can develop each network in a way that works best for them.

FemaleGlobal gender diversity

7:

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019(2018: 77%)

20

days a year
to volunteer

say that theirwork gives thema personal senseof accomplishment

2 01

38

Maximum ofmatching for
fundraisingof colleagues believe
strongly in the goals
and objectives ofthe businesst o rsadditional dayof annual leave
for colleagues’
birthdays£500 4colleague
engagement scoreacross a rangeof questions

5%

+1

83%

Dire cWe also continue to measure the engagement levels of ourcolleagues within our regular Informa Pulse survey, and the mostrecent results show that colleagues highly value their work andwant to actively contribute to the purpose of the business.

84%

2 018: 2

I believe these – and other benefits we’re looking at for the future –will make a genuine difference to our people’s personal andprofessional lives.

80%

19
20

Another important aspect is volunteering – we believe that donating
your skills, energy and passion to a cause you believe in is good foryou, as well as for those you’re helping. It makes you feel positivein yourself, and it can be a source of learning and personal growthoutside the office which supports your career path. So, we’ve
doubled the number of annual volunteering days all colleagues areencouraged to take, from two to four. We’ve also announced that
we’ll match up to £500 of fundraising by colleagues when it’sfor a registered charity.

In turn, this increased confidence and comfort with being one’s full
self at work and knowing that there is adequate support available,
will allow colleagues to perform at their best and maximise
performance and consequently success.

2017
7,525

18 le
:5

We thought really hard about what would make a difference topeople and what’s more personal than your birthday? So fromJanuary 2020 onwards, every colleague gets an extra day off for
their birthday and they’re encouraged to share with others what
they do with it.

I’m a strong believer in the empowerment of the lesbian, gay,bisexual, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) community,
which is one of the reasons why I was so keen to launch the
AllInforma Rainbow network in 2019. Colleagues around the world
will often tell you that Informa is very much a people business, andone of the missions of AllInforma Rainbow is to increase awarenessand visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community to help build inclusive
workplaces and enable colleagues to bring their full selves to work.

Headcount

20

Every company talks about valuing its colleagues – but the proofof that is in whether they really offer support and benefits that
help our colleagues with their life goals and to make a meaningful
contribution every day at work. Our new Constitution and theFasterForward strategy help ensure this is a great place to work,with shared values, but we also used 2019 to evaluate the benefits
we offer and see how we can enhance them.

How we are tracking our contributions:9

UK gap in male/female median pay(2018: 22.7%; 2017: 23.3%)
We now have

30%

of women on
our Board (3/10)

For more information on our gender pay gap reporting,go to informa.com/gpg

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

39

Our colleagues’ shared culture

AucklandWalk the World unites
thousands of colleagues
Abi Taylor
WTW and Sustainability
Campaign Manager
Informa Group, London

Walk the World (WTW) is a big part of our culture here at Informa,and growing more so. My role was created this year to help deliver
it for as many colleagues as possible. It’s an event that perfectly
embodies our guiding principle – Think Big, Act Small – the ideaof people coming together within a common idea but making
it their own at a local and personal level.

Dubai
Guangzhou

Nashville
LondonBangkokIn a company as large and geographically diverse as ours, we wantto find ways to feel connected with our colleagues. As our annual
team-building and fundraising event, now in its fourth year, WTW isan amazing example of this. Colleagues across the world are invitedon a walk to raise money for local causes that they care about.

Number ofparticipants:

Kuala Lumpur

Number ofwalks:

Hong Kong

40

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Number of offices
participating:93%

Proportion of colleagues
participating:

2019

2019

2019

2018

2018

2018

2017

2017

2017

2016

2016

2016

7,000

4,200

3,500
For more, seewalktheworld.informa.com

88%

feel prouder towork for Informa(2018: 88%; 2017: 84%)

We’re now seeing more than 20 offices achieve participation ratesof over 90%. Some even have more external guests joining thanthey have internal colleagues in the office, making it a real outreach
event as well.
It’s truly amazing to see colleagues all joined together arounda common goal, while also celebrating local cultures, traditions
and interests. It’s a great job to have and I hope to see it growmore and more in coming years.

84%

tell us WTW is a great idea
(2018: 96%; 2017: 95%)

Each walk has always had its own unique personality. In the careof a network of hundreds of local Sustainability Champions, thewalks have become more ambitious and creative each year, withcolleagues organising extras ranging from sports days to drumming
workshops, litter picks to city farm visits.
2019’s WTW was our biggest and best yet – more than 7,000
colleagues from 130 offices took part. To put that in context, that’smore participants than Informa had colleagues in the previous year!
Since its inception in 2016, we’ve also tripled the amount offundraising, and opened the invitation to business suppliers andpartners, family and friends, and even pets. This year, between
us we walked more than 1.5 times the length of the equator, withcolleagues in all corners of the globe, from Shanghai to New Delhi
and from Bahrain to Boston.

98%

2,000

87

65

60

30

130

87

80

35

2019

60%

2018

55%

2017

46%
2016

33%

more likely
to recommend
working for Informa(2018: 80%; 2017: 73%)

feel more connectedto their teamFundraising(GBP):

2019

£380k

2018

£181k

2017

£155k
2016

£120k

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

41

Taking action
to combat
climate change
As a business and as people, we care
deeply about climate change andwe’re determined to reduce our
impacts on the environment. We aretaking action across the Group to
reduce the impact of our offices, ourevents and our wider products. You
can read about some our initiatives
here. But there’s more to do and our2025 FasterForward programme sets
out that ambitious path in moredetail on pages 8-9.

Turning the tide for more

Buy a book,sustainable boat shows in Florida

plant a tree

Rob Correa

Barry Clarke

VP US Boating

Managing Director – Asia PacificInforma Markets, Fort Lauderdale

Taylor & Francis, Singapore
w

Here in Florida, we run several boat shows including the world’s
largest: the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.

More power to us

Our progress on generators is probably the thing I’m mostproud of. The city infrastructure wasn’t able to deliver the
power we needed so we were bringing in a lot of additional
petrol generators. By working with city officials and local powercompanies, we’ve supported overhaul and upgrade of the local
electricity grids.

The real heroes of this story are Brenda Foo and herMarketing Team in Singapore. The original idea came fromour shared aspiration to create more sustainable products,
defined in 2018 as ‘harnessing innovation to build new
products and services that improve the quality of life’.

Plant the idea

The Marketing team took charge of curating appropriate
books that we would promote to customers and helped us
partner with One Tree Planted, a non-profit that works withreforestation organisations around the world that needfinancial support. Our idea was to run a marketing campaignthat planted a tree for every book sold.
The Marketing team then engaged the Sales teams andwon their enthusiasm to identify key customers, bookdealers and people in the supply chain who were more likely
to be engaged with an environmentally minded product. We
also ran social media campaigns to reach a lot more people.

Launching new ideas to build a better show

Watch it growWe were also using a lot of treated hardwood flooring. The
lumber had to be stored outside between shows and, with thewear and weathering, it only lasted two years before needing to
be replaced. We’ve now designed and adopted recycled plastic
decking for nearly 90% of all flooring at the show. It lasts much
longer, creates a use for plastic waste, perhaps meaning lessplastic enters the ocean, and hugely reduces our use ofchemically treated hardwoods.

Journals sent for pulping

2019*
2019

684k
684k*
217 tonnes
2018

2018
2018

A total of 71 libraries, schools and universities across the
Asia Pacific region participated, buying just over 1,800 books,
which generated an estimated net £100,000 of new business.
Inspired by this success, we doubled our customers’
donations, then Informa Group matched it again, giving the
campaign a grand total of 5,400 trees planted within thereforestation of Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesia.
The programme was so successful that the UK Marketing
team also picked up the baton to run the programme there,
earning an extra £160,000 gross revenue and planting evenmore trees.
This idea won the Marketing team an award for Sustainability
at the Informa Awards. To have seen the Singapore teamoriginate an idea, grow it and gain recognition, was oneof the best days of my career so far.

2018

309k 309k

519k
519k

We wanted a programme that increased the readershipof books aligned with environmental management and the
UN SDGs, increasing our sales and with a positive social
outcome too.

We’ve also been upgrading our vehicle fleet. Given our fuelusage accounted for around 10% of Informa’s carbon emissions,this makes a material improvement to the overall emissionsof the Group and we’re proud to make that difference.

To deliver the event, we own over seven miles of floating docks
that we set up for each show. Even though they were built toregulations, we discovered the docks were at risk of shedding
polystyrene pellets from the interior and we didn’t want to put
the Florida ecosystems at risk. In 2019, we completed a project toupdate the docks with a polyethylene resin sheath that prevents
this happening. Even better, we found the docks’ buoyancy
increased by 10% meaning we can continue to grow our show
and improve safety. Other boat shows are now calling us to ask
how we did it.

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

2019

121k
121k

In 2019, for the first year, shows in Miami and Palm Beach ran
entirely off city grid power and we eliminated half the generators
at Fort Lauderdale. We’re over the hump and well on the way tobeing 100% generator-free. This not only saves us money andreduces our carbon emissions but it reduces local air and noise
pollution as well as enhancing the local infrastructure that others
can then make use of.

42

Books sent for pulping

352 tonnes
2017
2017

2017

694k
694k

2017

252k252k
445 tonnes*warehouse clearance% of paper certified as sustainably sourced

2017: 63% (10,832 tonnes)
2018: 94% (10,240 tonnes)
2019: 94% (9,347 tonnes)

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

43

Taking action to combat climate change
Supporting others in addressing climate change

Our commitment totackle climate change

As discussed in other stories, our impact on the world through ourContent and Customers, our ‘brainprint’, is far greater than anything
we do through our direct or even our indirect operations.

Reporting on our progress
In 2019, we were recognised by leading
measures of responsible andsustainable business:• For the second year running, Informa
was included in the DJSI World Index
and the DJSI Europe Index• We were re-awarded a ranking in the
FTSE4Good and Ethibel Indices• We also participated in the CDP for
the first time and we will release ourresults publicly from 2020.

Nicolas Desolino

By proving platforms in specialist markets, we can help our customers
discover and develop solutions to some of the world’s biggest
environmental challenges whilst creating a platform for growth for
Informa and more satisfied customers.
From our Greenbuild or Middle East Electricity events, which haveenvironmental issues at their heart, to our Aviation Week or New Hopebrands which build significant content around reducing the sector’s
impact on climate change into their work, the sustainability agenda is
woven into many of our products. Our books and journals contain over
1,300 chapters, articles and teaching and learning resources related toclimate action, and our Finance vertical in Informa Intelligence helps
with the assessment and confidence building in Green Bonds.

Group Sustainability& Reporting Manager
Informa Group, London

The urgency of climate change has rapidly risen up the agenda during
2019 but it’s long been something that Informa has taken seriously.
It’s nearly 15 years since our first corporate carbon footprint andour first carbon neutral event. Much has changed over that time but
our commitment to address our impact on climate change and support
others do the same has only grown.

We have a number of ambitious programmes in place to reduce our impacts:

By 2021, our aim is to become a certified CarbonNeutral® Company,in line with the CarbonNeutral Protocol. We have already committed
as a group to offset all of the unavoidable carbon emissions fromthe operation of our estate and all of our business travel. We’re also
developing increasing numbers of offsetting programmes at our events.
We’ll then focus on making our products carbon neutral as well.

• We’ve conducted a series of energy efficiency audits in the UK, in line with
the ESOS legislation, and are examining if we can roll it out further• We’re investing in energy efficiency where possible, such as the replacementof lighting at our 600 person Blue Fin office.

For more, see
informa.com/carbonoffsetting

Measuring our progress

We want to be one of the leading businesses in reducing our own
contributions to climate change.

We’re working with senior leadership and the Risk Committee
to understand how Informa will be affected by emerging impacts
related to climate change. This includes working to meet therecommendations of the international Task Force on
Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

We continue to expand our investment in the monitoringof our energy usage.

But we want to go further and our new FasterForward
programme commits Informa to be a carbon neutral
organisation by 2021 and develop carbon neutral products
across most of our portfolio by 2025. This is with a long term
goal of being zero waste and net zero carbon by 2030 or earlier.

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

• Adaptation risks, including those arising from increases in extreme
weather or other disruptions caused by climate change. This is seen
as a driver of one of our principal risks related to a major incident
at one of our events or offices.
• Transition impacts, including the advent of carbon pricing orchanges in customer behaviour and expectations.
We believe the actions we are taking are helping us manage andcontrol these impacts in a suitable manner and will be publishing
more information in future reports.

of our electricity use in
our estate is now fromrenewable sources• Our Fort Lauderdale boat shows invested in new trucks and infrastructure
to save more than 380 tCO2 e in total over the last three years,
representing around 10% of Informa’s total scope 1 emissions

Understanding the impacts on our businessWe consider two types of impacts:95%• We launched our Sustainable Event Management System (ISEMS) which
includes a number of measures to reduce our carbon emissions from events(see pages 26-29). This includes dozens of our events switching to being
renewable electricity powered

FasterForward to carbon neutral and net zero

In 2019, we were one of the first organisations to have ourtargets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative to showthat our goals to halve emissions from our buildings,
generators and vehicles (scope 1 and 2), and to reduce ourother controllable (scope 3) emissions by 20%, are sufficient
to do our part to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C.

More than• We have installed more than 700 solar panels in our Boulder office aiming totake that site completely ‘off grid’ and saving 142 tCO2 e a year

Our offsetting programme helps others reduce their emissions byhelping impoverished communities access clean, green energy andprotecting and enhancing natural ecosystems. These are all withinestablished, certified programmes.

The last two years have seen a particular increase in our work in thisarea. We’ve summarised the key initiatives and data on these pages.
Alongside the issue of waste, we believe this is the most important areaof our environmental impact that we must manage.

44

Reducing our carbon emissions

Offsetting the emissions we can’t yet eliminate• For the first time, a selection of our environmental data,
including our carbon footprint, was assured externallyby Bureau Veritas in 2019 (see page 52)• In 2018, we broke new ground – being the first large
exhibitions organiser to share a detailed breakdownof the carbon emissions of a typical event (see 2018
Sustainability Report for more)• We’re also a founding member of an industry collaboration
called DIMPACTS which is creating a better tool to measure
the carbon footprint of our digital products

HOTEL

Team hotel and travel

Our Environment continued

Ambitions• Increase our use of sustainable hotels• Shift to more sustainable modes of transport andseek to oﬀset emissions from ﬂights
Examples• We’re in discussions with our hotel providers and someshows, such as Pharmapack Europe, have alreadyswitched to a more sustainable hotel this year.
• The Health Ingredients Europe show team cut theircarbon emissions by 90% by taking the train.
• Several shows, such as Leather Expo, GreenBuild andExpo East and West, carbon oﬀset their team travel.

Understanding
and acting onan event’s impact

Size of impact (% Control 1)

33%

Size of impact (% Control 1)
A GREATEVENT

1%

WELCOME

Working to exceed expectations
Every Informa division runs events of varying sizes,
ranging from a few dozen attendees to hundreds ofthousands. This makes us one of the largest events
organisers in the world, particularly in the B2B space,
and the environmental impact of our events iscorrespondingly large. We know from attendee surveys
that more than 80% of our audiences want events to be
run in a responsible way. Last year’s sustainability
report shared 40 ways our events can be moresustainable (informa.com/sustainable events) across
our pillars of Content, Communities and theEnvironment – with the aim of helping others make theirevents more sustainable too.
This year, we’ve seen more interest from ourstakeholders in the environmental impact of events,
including plastic usage, climate change, food sourcing
and species extinction. Our goal is to have a market
leading approach to running the most sustainable
events possible. Of course, it takes time to do things
consistently across more than 500 trade shows andhundreds of conferences. But the combination of skills
and experience that comes from our expanded
sustainability team puts us in a great position.

Size of impact (% Control 1)

Energy use of venue

Size of impact (% Control 1)

Ambitions• To reduce the quantity of waste generated at our
events and to increase our level of recycling
Examples• Shows such as Decorex, One of a Kind and MAGIC
have introduced water reﬁll stations to prevent
plastic bottle waste.
• Where local facilities support it, some shows like
GreenBuild are starting to achieve more than 90%
recycling rates from landﬁll.
Size of impact (% Control 2)

Informa feature build

3%

Size of impact (% Control 3)Size of impact (% Control 1)

Catering organised by Informa

HOTEL

Attendee hotel stays
Ambitions• Help our attendees make informed sustainablechoices when selecting their accommodation
Examples• GreenBuild audits all of its recommended hotels to
help them identify areas they can improve theirsustainability. They back this up with education
sessions for the host hotels. Oﬀsetting is part of theshow’s ‘green legacy’ in the host city.
• We are working with our main hotel consultants toﬁnd ways of highlighting the most sustainable hotelchoices to our attendees.

14

Size of impact (% Control 1)

27

Exhibitors’ disposable stands

5%

07

Organiser logistics
Ambitions• Increase our use of sustainable transport methods
and reduce our amount of transport through the useof local suppliers
Examples• We work with contractors who seek to consolidate
freight at out of town warehouses. This reduces
shipping, congestion and pollution.

Ambitions• Source catering locally and sustainably, without
single-use plastic packaging
Examples• Attendees tell us they want healthier, locally sourced
food at events. Broadband World Forum invited a local
microbrewery to set up on the show ﬂoor and ourRemode fashion show increased its meat-free options.

Size of impact (% Control 1)

3%

We are using them to guide our decision making and to help
stakeholders understand the relative impact of our events.
The graphic above shows it split by control, and to the right
we've shown the overall impact.

60%

1%

Ambitions• For all parts of the show built by Informa to generate
zero waste
Examples• UBM in EMEA has worked with GES to create newregistration stock items which solved the issue ofdisposable registration builds.
• In Las Vegas, shows have purchased water reﬁll
stations for multiple reuses.
Size of impact (% Control 1)

Ambitions• Find a sustainable solution to disposable exhibition
carpet as part of an industry-wide collaboration
called SEBIG
Examples• Freeman, one of our largest contractors in the US,
seeks to reuse carpet up to 10 times.
• Some UBM shows have trialled carpet-free aisles.
• In Dubai, carpet is recovered and used in schools or
homes.
• Almost all our European carpet is recycled after events.

The numbers on this page show estimates of the carbon footprint
for a typical event based on a sample of more than 50 events but
it is important to recognise there is a large variation by event.

INFORMA PLC THE ROLE WE PLAY 2018

Bins and cleaning waste

H20

Attendee travel
Ambitions• To engage our attendees with sustainable travel
options and to oﬀset the carbon emissions of theirtravel to the event as a part of registration
Examples• Shows like CPhI WorldWide and Natural Products Expooﬀer attendees the option of oﬀsetting the carbon
from their travel to the event.
• We are exploring ways that we can make this part ofthe standard registration process.
• Decorex International oﬀered a free coﬀee toattendees who used public transport to the event.

Carpet used by Informa

44%

Notes

38

0.3%

32

Ambitions• Use LEDs for all lighting• Venues have energy management plans• For all electricity to be from renewable sources
Examples• MAGIC show and MGM invested together to replacelighting with LEDs throughout Mandalay Bay.
• 14 European shows and counting currently choose
renewable energy.
• Our YPI boat shows have reduced their fuel usage(1/3 of Informa’s total fossil fuels) by nearly 10% over
2 years, and plan on a 35% reduction by 2021.

1
trol
Con

Promotional and lanyards
Ambitions• Find a solution for lanyards that creates zero waste
Examples• Our Sleep + Eat show piloted bamboo lanyards.
• More shows, such as IFSEC, are collecting lanyards forreuse or recycling.

2
trol
Con

1%

Paper for brochures and newspapers

LEVEL 1

Lucille Ryan, Sustainability Manager,
EMEA Informa Group, London

Ambitions• For all signage to be made from sustainable materials
and to be recycled after use
Examples• Many shows, such as MAGIC and World of Concrete,
reuse their signs from year to year by ensuring they
are not dated and that branding has longevity.
• Our Black Hat Europe has also been trialling theuse of PVC free banners, reducing our reliance on thisharmful material.
Size of impact (% Control 1)

Ambitions• Ensure all printing uses entirely FSC-recycled paper
Examples• Our Paper & Timber Policy asks shows to seek
sustainably certiﬁed, recycled paper and almost allshows across Informa and UBM are compliant.
• Pharmapack Europe reduced the carbon impact of its
event printing by 14% by switching to recycled paper.

A GREAT EVENT

3
trol
Con

Signage used by Informa
45

Ambitions• Work towards preventing the use of disposable
exhibition stands which are our main cause of waste
Examples• CPhI WorldWide is leading trials to introduce
regulations preventing the use of disposable
stand structures.
• Cosmoprof Asia and APLF Leather & Materials haveboth reduced their maximum stand height to 3m,
resulting in an estimated reduction in stand waste
by 50%, as well as making stand builds faster, safer
and cheaper.
• Furniture China highlights and rewards bestpractice through their sustainable stand awards.
• These all helped UBM group win the UFI’s(Global Association for the Event Industry) 2018
“Best Practices in Sustainable Exhibiting” award.
Size of impact (% Control 2)

99%

10%

Size of impact (% Control 3)

31%

Exhibitor logistics
Ambitions• Encourage exhibitors to use the most sustainablelogistics option and work with our key logistics
companies to improve eﬃciency of shipping
Examples• We encourage exhibitors to use show contractors
where possible, making it easier to consolidate
shipping and provide materials/equipment locally,
reducing long haul shipping.
• By introducing a time slot booking system for event
trucks, Vitafoods Europe greatly reduced local
congestion and the resulting air pollution.
Size of impact (% Control 3)

9%Control 1

4%

Control 2

3%

Control 3

93%
Attendee travel 60%

Attendee hotel stays 31%

Exhibitor logistics 9%

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46

For more, see
informa.com/eventcarbonfootprint

Change in our emissions over time (tCO2e)

Breakdown of our 2019 emissions related to our
Science Based Targets

Scope 1 – Natural gas
Scope 1 – Refrigerants
Scope 1 – Company cars and generator fuels
Scope 2 – Electricity usage
Scope 3 – Value chain emissions

2017

2018

Note: 2018 data
includes UBM

Events’ logistics 240,000

data from dateof acquisition

2019

7,010
6,697
6,477
After
renewable
electricity
purchase

Events’ waste 59,000

1,429

397
1,083

1,441

1,083

843
918

918

1,989

1,989

After
offsets

Events’ material use 53,000

2.504
567

Events’ energy & water use 39,000

1,197

Location-based
emissions

Location-based
emissions

Location-based
emissionsMarket-based
emissionsNetemissionsPurchased goods & services and capital goods 190,000

Direct energy use 4,388
Scope 1
Understanding
the impacts
on our business
Emissionsfrom company
vehicles & generator fuel1,083

(tCO e)2
We’re working
with senior leadership and the Risk Committee
to understand how Informa will be affected by emerging risks
related to climate change. This includes working to meet therecommendations of the international Task Force on
Climate-Related Financial Disclosures Emissions(TCFD). from refrigerants

918

We consider two types of risks:• Adaptation risks, including the impacts from climate change driving
the impact and likelihood of one of Informa’s principal
Emissions from natural gas
risks a major incident at one of our events or offices, caused
1,989
by extreme weather or other disruption.
• Transition risks, including the advent of carbon pricing or changes incustomer behaviour and expectations.
We believe the actions we are taking are helping us manage andcontrol these risks in a suitable manner and will be publishing
more information in line with the TCFD in 2020.

Business travel 34,000

Books & journals distribution 16,000

Scope 2
(tCO2e)Market-based Scope 2397

Use of digital products 15,000
Employee commuting 11,000

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

47

Flying and theefficiency of events

A well designed and run event, especially where that event is a brandleader in the specialist market it serves, can be a highly efficient useof travel and time, particularly if that event is festivalised with manydifferent components such as a trade show, conference, meetings etc.

Across a small sample of 15 events, we estimate
Ben Wielgus

education in India
Sanjay Sarvankar

Head of Sustainability

Chief HR Officer

Informa Group, London

Informa Markets, Mumbai

Over the last year, the level of focus and concern over the climate
crisis has understandably increased as the general public has
become more aware of the scale of the challenge. It presents
a significant agenda for change for most businesses, and a needto deepen conversations and actions to address the issue.
One of the most common questions we receive from stakeholders
is whether a possible change in attitudes to flying might affect thelevel of attendance at some of our events.

Across our sampled audience groups, more than
90% of those audiences told us they said thatthey saved more flights than they took.

At the heart of classic sustainability debate is the ‘triple bottom line’:
the idea of considering a whole range of impacts in balance acrossa range of areas. This is key when we think about flights as they aren’t
inherently bad. The carbon emissions from flying have a negative
impact on the environment but the net result of flights when we
consider all the social, economic and environmental impacts canbe very positive.
For me, it’s helpful to remember that flights can enable face to faceconnections, which in turn foster knowledge sharing and innovation,
things that are highly necessary to address sustainability issues ina range of industries and markets. Flights foster human connection
and understanding, and they help create jobs and investment.
We believe that the modern business world needs both digitaltechnologies to help sustain relationships and in-person meetings
which can really cement them. Choosing the right time, method
and purpose of connection can help us to do this most efficiently
across the year.

48

a net saving of 190,000 flights.

Solar-powered

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Our industry has long stated that a great event provides a platform
for thousands of meetings (both pre-organised and serendipitous),
as well as training, networking, association gatherings, entertainment
and trade. Done well, such events are highly efficient for all
stakeholders, whether they are attendees, exhibitors, organisers,
contractors, venues and even the cities in which they take place.
To help us understand this more, we’ve begun to survey attendees
across a range of events to gather evidence on the extent to which
our events help save flights that would otherwise be taken to achieve
the same outcome. We’ve had results from more than a dozen events
so far and 90% of surveyed audiences told us that by attending, they
saved more flights than they took: at least two flights, on average.
Extrapolating this would mean that those events created a net savingof 190,000 flights. While this is just a sample the story is clear, ina world that is starting to think more carefully about travel, a single
trip to an event can save time, money, emissions and nights awayfrom families whilst providing all the benefits and advantages ofbringing people together in person.

Simone Shinde
Executive Assistant &CSR Manager
Informa Markets, Mumbai

The power of education

We have both been involved personally with social work, so it wasvery inspiring to learn about Informa’s sustainability initiatives andWalk the World in particular when we joined the business as part ofan acquisition in 2018. It sparked conversations here in the Mumbai
office about how we could give back to our community. Informa’s
main contribution to the world is through education, and that idea
really clicked for us. For many children in India, education is still not
readily available – it’s still something like a dream!

Renewable networking

We teamed up with the children’s charity Make A Difference(MAD) to evaluate how we could make the biggest impact together
and where our unique skills and relationships could make thebiggest difference.

We’ve had results from more than a dozen events so far. This isa small, but growing sample that hints strongly at a clear story – ina world that is starting to think more carefully about travel, a single
trip to an event can save time, money, emissions and nights awayfrom families whilst providing all the benefits and advantages ofbringing people together in person.

MAD introduced us to a programme in the remote Palargh district
where the schools had very minimal facilities. When our teamvisited there, it was clear that the kids were missing out on vital
education because of two common challenges: the lack of facilities
and the lack of electricity. Many of these areas only receive
1-2 hours of electricity per day.

One of our goals is to keep finding ways to increase the efficiencyof our events further by enabling and facilitating more things to bedone in a single trip.

We saw that building science laboratories that many schools
could access would make a huge difference, but we had to also
solve the power issue without relying on expensive, polluting
generators. That’s where our own unique networks could makea real difference: we run the Renewable Energy India event –40,000 people and 800 exhibitors all dedicated to India’senergy revolution.

We are also working to offset the impact of the carbon emissions
associated with that travel. From 1 Jan 2020, Informa will be offsetting
all our own travel with high quality, certified carbon offsets. We also
want to make sure that all our attendees have the same opportunity
and are in the process of expanding offset options when booking into
our events. Offsetting is not a perfect solution, but it compensates
for the carbon emissions from travel in the near-term, providing theaviation industry with time to innovate further and develop evermore sustainable solutions.

From there it really clicked so beautifully. One of our exhibitors was
happy to support us specify, buy and install the panels. We also
funded the equipment for six labs covering topics from computing
and robotics to e-learning and biology. MAD now runs thesefacilities and welcomes thousands of children from over 20 schools.
We’re also still involved, using our volunteer time to help develop
the children’s interest in education and their future aspirations.

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

49

Delivering sustainability

Delivering sustainability,
now and into the future
Ben Wielgus
Head of Sustainability
Informa Group, London

An order of magnitude increase

Over the last three years in my role as Head of Sustainability
at Informa, the business has grown from 6,500 people to nearly
12,000. This has meant significant changes to many aspects ofour business but particularly in our approach to sustainability.
I’ve found myself writing words like ‘transformation’ and ‘stepchange’ to describe it. Growth has certainly given us a strong
foundation to take our next leap forward – the launch of our2025 FasterForward programme (see pages 8-9).
I believe this will bring about change of an order of magnitude
greater than we’ve seen before. As a set of commitments they
represent a meaningful, long-term commercial differentiator for
Informa. They will create value for many stakeholders inside andoutside the business, and I truly think they have the potential to
make a lasting impact in our industry, and the industries we touch.

Our Sustainability agenda covers:

The change itself will not be delivered by our sustainability teamalone, but by thousands of colleagues working together with
common purpose and principles, just like our success to date has
been delivered by those who are most enthusiastic about making
a difference to the sustainability of our business and our markets.

Our Environment

Our Content
Our Communities

Our Colleagues

Over the last decade, we focused Informa’s sustainability
programme on our most material issues. We worked with the
Responsible Media Forum, and identified that we could make themost impact through our Content and Customers, which is where
we have concentrated our efforts. There are also aspects of ourEnvironmental, Community and Colleague agendas that matter
significantly to one or more stakeholders, and to our future success.

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Executive Management
Team including divisional CEOs
Corporate
Governance
Teams

Property
Teams

Policies andCodes of Conduct

Purpose and Values

Sustainability
Team

Brand andCommunications

HR~250 divisional sustainability champions and sustainability co-ordinators

Taylor &FrancisInformaIntelligence

InformaMarkets

Informa
Connect

InformaTech

Underpinned by Global Support

As part of our FasterForward programme, we’re updating ourmateriality assessment specifically for our business and expect topublish this later in 2020. It will help us steer towards our priorities
for the next five years. As always, we will continue to be alert andresponsive to emerging issues.
We will still consider our impacts across all five areas of Content,
Customers, Communities, Colleagues and the Environment but
FasterForward gives us focus on some of the most important issues
that we’ve already identified from conversations with hundredsof colleagues.
We’ve also spoken with several external stakeholders including
major suppliers and investors, and we’re taking part in two industry
initiatives to measure materiality, our SEBIG project (see page 30)
and the Responsible Media Forum.
In 2020 we will be managing many moving pieces, but top of thelist will be establishing the remaining baselines for measurementof our performance against our FasterForward commitments.
We’ll also be launching new systems to support colleague
volunteering, donations and impact measurement on host cities.
The Fundamentals, part of ISEMS (see pages 26-29), will help
hundreds of our events identify opportunities to create value fromsustainability. We’ll also continue to work on embedding Informa’s
Constitution with our FasterForward programme. That will involve
helping colleagues to build sustainability into our products in a waythat Champions the Specialist and supports each market’s transition
to a more sustainable way of doing business.
With the climate crisis at the forefront of many people’s minds,
closely followed by concerns around waste and social justice,
we’ll ensure these are priority areas for our work, and look forward
to reporting our progress next year.
At the time of writing this report, we’ve yet to understand the full
impact of COVID-19, but we’ll work hard to ensure we can continue
with our commitments to sustainability but with consideration to
any changes brought about by the pandemic.

50

Informa
PLC Board

Focusing on what matters mostPriorities for 2020

Our Customers

Sustainability governance at Informa

Governing sustainability at Informa

Our new FasterForward approach is ambitious and broad-reachingacross the business, but our investment over the past three years
has given us a strong foundation to deliver on our commitments.
As sustainability becomes a business imperative, we’re seeing moreteams make sustainability objectives part of performance appraisals.
Our central Group sustainability team is becoming a centre of
excellence, providing strategic direction and enabling others inthe business to be successful in their own sustainability ambitions.
We’re also delighted to see that our Sustainability Champions
programme grows from strength to strength with around 250
colleagues giving their time to support local initiatives, up fromfewer than 25 champions four years ago.
The divisional CEOs and Group Executive Leadership Team havean active role in monitoring performance against our targets,
reporting to the Informa Board at least every six months.
Our approach to sustainability is underpinned by a set ofsustainability policies, linked to our wider Group policies such
as Informa’s Code of Conduct. All are available on our website(informa.com).
The diagram above shows how we structure sustainability
governance at a high level, and the links with teams suchas compliance, HR, strategy and health, safety & security.

Assurance over selected sustainability KPIs

This year we sought assurance of selected sustainability data fromboth our internal auditors and external assurance specialists, Bureau
Veritas. We are pleased to announce that we have successfully gained
assurance over the data marked * in the table on page 53.

External assurance statement
Bureau Veritas UK Limited has been engaged by Informa plc
to provide limited assurance over selected sustainability
performance indicators for inclusion in its sustainability report.
This Assurance Statement applies to the related information
included within the scope of work described below, for theperiod 1 January to 31 December 2019: Fundraising, Company
contributions, Volunteering, Headcount, Training, Colleague
turnover, Absenteeism, Global gender diversity, Employee
Engagement Indicator, Waste, Resource Use, Greenhouse Gas
Emissions (Scope 1, 2 & partial Scope 3) and Water.
On the basis of the methodology and activities describedabove, Bureau Veritas concludes that there is no evidence
to suggest that the data presented here is not materiallycorrect and a fair representation of Informa’s sustainability
performance. A full verification statement including
methodology, limitations and exclusions and the reporting
criteria can be found on the Group’s website: https://www.
informa.com/sustainability/sustainability-reports

WWW.INFORMA.COM/SUSTAINABILITY

51

Sustainability KPIs Summary Data Table 2016-2019
Content & Customers

Units

2019

2018

2017

2016

Revenues£m£2,890 m£2,369 m£1,758 m£1,346 m

Profit before tax (adjusted)£m£933 m£732 m£546 m£377 m

New books published

Number of books

7,300

7,100

7,100

6,100

Countries sold into

Number of countries

170+

170+

165

165

Open access journals

Number of journals

276

268

173

108

Open access articles

No. of OA articles published

16,70013,50011,073

7,602

Ebooks% of all book titles

78%

77%

74%

73%

Accepted articles from developing countries% of all accepted articles

38%

35%

35%

36%

Subscriptions to our intelligence products

No. of subscribers

30,00027,00038,00025,000Space across all our exhibitors

m sqm

4.6 m

4.2 m

1.8 m

1.4 m

People attending our events

No. of people

5.8 m

5.5 m

2.0 m

1.3 m

Communities

Units

2019

2018

2017

2016

Volunteering% of colleagues volunteering

14%

15%

9%

6%

Number of colleagues

1,577

1,729

689

372

Total company donations£k£ 1,630 k£ 1,409 k£ 685 k

£ 476 kCompany donations (cash)£k£ 644 k (*)£ 354 k

£ 411 k£ 338 kVolunteer programme costs£k recorded£ 424 k (*)£ 376 k£ 235 k£ 95 kDonations in kind£k recorded£ 562 k (*)£ 678 k£ 39 k£ 44 kColleague fundraising£k£ 305 k (*)£ 191 k£ 82 k£ 71 kStatutory effective tax rate

%

22.8%

21.4%

21%

18%

Colleagues

Units

2019

2018

2017

2016

Headcount

Number of colleagues

11,296 (*)

11,197

7,525

6,934

Spend on training£m£ 2.7 m (*)£ 2.9 m£ 2.5 m£ 2.3 mColleague turnover – Voluntary% turnover

10% (*)

16%

16%

16%

Colleague turnover – Total% turnover

26% (*)

26%

24%

24%

Absenteeism

Sick days/year per colleague

3.3 (*)

3.0

2.2

2.3

All Colleague gender split% female

59% (*)

59%

56%

56%

All management gender split% female

53% (*)

54%

51%

49%

Leadership group gender split% female

30% (*)

32%

27%

33%

Director gender split% female

30% (*)

25%

22%

20%

Promotions gender split% female

62% (*)

60%

60%

63%

Gender pay gap (UK)% difference

22.3%

22.7%

23.3%

NA

Colleague engagement score% saying they are engaged

80% (*)

77%

74%

71%

Environment

Units

2019

2018

2017

2016

Energy consumption

MWh30,60034,92929,951

28,895

Renewable electricity generated/purchased

MWh15,498

2,213

648

19

Scope 1 emissions – Total

tonnes CO2e3,990 (*)

4,776

3,205

2,997

tonnes CO2e

1,989

2,504

1,197

967

tonnes CO2e

918

843

567

567

tonnes CO2e

1,083

1,429

1,441

1,463

Energy & greenhouse gas emissions

Emissions from natural gas
Emissions from refrigerants
Emissions from company vehicles & generator fuelScope 2 emissions (location-based)
Total scope 1 & 2 location-based emissions
Intensity ratio total location-based scope 1&2 emissions
Scope 2 emissions (market-based)
Total Scope 1 & 2 market-based emissions
Carbon offsets used to compensate for remaining emissions
Residual scope 1&2 emissions post green energy and offsets
Resource use

tonnes CO2e6,697 (*)

7,010

6,477

7,164

10,687

11,786

9,682

10,162

tonnes CO2e/Colleague

0.96 (*)

1.18

1.29

1.59

397 (*)

6,385

6,477

7,164

tonnes CO2e

4,388

11,161

9,682

10,162

4,388

NA

NA

NA

tonnes CO2e011,161

9,682

10,162

tonnes CO2e
tonnes CO2e
tonnes CO2ePaper consumption

tonnes9,347 (*)

10,24010,823

7,149

Paper from sustainable sources% certified paper

94% (*)

94%

63%

88%

Books & journals sent for pulping

tonnes271 (*)

470

587

523

Office waste generated

tonnes7,387 (*)

6,309

5,073

5,089

Office water consumption

m3

435 k (*)

417 k

261 k

250 k

Notes:
Data marked with a (*) indicates that Bureau Veritas has independently assured the 2019 total data.
Our reporting methodology is available at: www.informa.com/sustainability-methodology
Where accuracy improvements have been made, some earlier data has been restated.
2018 totals include UBM data from date of acquisition with the exception of the intensity metric.					

					

52

INFORMA PLC SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019

Performance against 2020 sustainability goals
In 2017, we set some mid-term targets to help us focus on improvements while we developed 2025 FasterForward strategy.
Issue

Governance

Goal

Status Progress in 2019

Sustainability By 2019, we’ll have an expanded framework forframework
sustainability across the business and will have launched
it to all our colleagues. This will be integrated with our
purpose and business strategy. More than two-thirdsof colleagues will be familiar with it.

Our 2025 FasterForward programme was developed in 2019 and waslaunched at our 2019 results day. Our overall business strategy now
includes a sustainability pillar.

Enhance our absolute score by focusing on
Dow Jones
Sustainability opportunities to progress in constituent parts of the
Indices (“DJSI”) index, and work towards DJSI World inclusion by 2020.
performance

Informa has been included in the DJSI World Index and the DJSI Europe
Index for the last two years. Our score puts us in the top 10% ofcompanies. 2019 score: 65 (2018:68, 2017:61). Informa also continues
to be listed in the FTSE4Good Index and in 2019 we reentered the CDP.

Sector
By 2020, we’ll participate in at least two sector
collaboration collaborations on understanding and improving theimpact of our sector.

As discussed on page 30, we helped found SEBIG (Sustainable EventsBig Initiative Group) working together on a series of events industry
initiatives. We have also partnered with AEO/AEV to help adapt ourFundamentals for the UK events sector and worked on the EIC’s
sustainability steering group to launch this new standards. We’re alsopart of the media industry’s DIMPACTS group to create a tool to measure
our digital carbon footprints.

By 2020, we’ll identify five new projects that engage
Sustainable
Development our customers within a specific vertical around theGoals (“SDG”) SDGs and create value in helping address the goals.
engagement

Pages 10-11 outline our progress on embedding the SDGs anddeveloping products that contribute to the SDGs or support ourcustomers make their own contributions to the SDGs. Themes aroundthe SDGs feature in events from fashion to agriculture, tech to publishing.

By 2020, we’ll have a set of KPIs that help us to better
Key
Performance understand the role of our content and communitiesin creating broader stakeholder value.
Indicators(“KPI”)
development

Our 2025 FasterForward programme also includes a number of targets
and we are continuning to develop more. See pages 8-9.

City impact

By 2020, we’ll have partnered with five cities to improve
the local impact of our events.

We have developed a consistent methodology to measure our
economic, social and environmental impact on host cities and havepiloted this with 4 cities. But across many events we continue to partnerwith visitor bureaus and local government to help ensure our events
have a positive impact on our host cities.

Measuring
impact on
peopleBy 2020, we’ll have introduced a programme of common
measurement of the impact we create through content/
community for all attendees at our events.

We are using our Sustainable Event Management System and theFundamentals to track how embedded content around sustainability
is across our events and we are expanding this into other divisions.
See pages 26-29.

Meaningfulcharity
partnerships

By 2020, we’ll have a way of measuring our contribution
to charities across the Group and our 10 biggest shows
will have a charity partner.

We have centralised the collection of financial data and the Fundamentals
gather data on the in-kind giving from each event but we have not yet
embedded systems to gather value in kind giving from our non-event
products. Nine of our ten largest events have a charity partner.

Genderbalance

Each year, we’ll make continuous progress on female
representation in our Senior Leadership Group

Our Leadership team is 30% female (2018: 32% and 2017: 27%). Our
Directors are also now 30% female (208: 25% and 2017: 22%). We also
continue to report on our UK Gender Pay Gap at www.informa.com/gpg

Colleague
wellbeing

By the end of 2019, we’ll have launched a Companywide
colleague campaign to support physical and mental
wellbeing.

We offer colleagues an Employee Assistance Programme in several
countries that gives access to external, professional counselling support.
Individual divisions such as T&F, Informa Connect and Informa Markets
are also implementing broader wellbeing programmes as reelvant
for their markets.

Colleague
participation

Participation in Walk the World will be more than 60%
a year, every year, and more than 20% of our colleagues
will develop their skills through volunteering by 2020.

60% of colleagues participated in Walk The World in 2019 (2018: 55% and2017: 46%). Volunteering rates were at 14% in 2019 (2018: 15%, 2017: 9%).
We will seek to increase that in 2020.

Environment Our
contribution
to climatechangeBy 2020, we’ll have cut our carbon footprint by another
10% per head and at least five of our top 10 offices will
have invested in energy efficiency measures.

Thanks to a series of energy efficiency initiatives, estates rationalisation
and a shift of almost all of our offices to green energy, our carbon
footprint went down by 31% from 2017 and our energy intensity percolleague is 0.96tCO2e/colleague (2017: 1.43)

By 2020, more than 95% of our paper usage will befrom sustainably certified sources, with the rest
responsibly sourced.

94% of paper used across Informa was sustainably sourced in 2019(2018: 94%. 2017: 63%) and we are working to increase this further.

Content

Community

Colleagues

Responsible
sourcing

Progress

Stalled/missed

Improving

Sustainability is a collective responsibility– so join the debate by sending yourthoughts to sustainability@informa.com

On track

Ahead

Our registered office address is:
5 Howick Place
London, SW1P 1WG
t: +44 (0)20 7017 5000
www.informa.com/sustainability
For more information on our sustainability programme, or if you’d like to get involved, contact
sustainability@informa.com

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