22Sep2025
NBF 2025 Is the First Nordic Swan Ecolabelled Large Scale Business Conference in the Nordics
by: Nordic Business Forum
We’re proud to share that Nordic Business Forum 2025 has officially been awarded the Nordic Swan Ecolabel—making us the first large scale business conference in the Nordics to receive this prestigious environmental certification.
The event, taking place on 24–25 September 2025 at Messukeskus Helsinki, will bring together more than 7,500 business leaders from nearly 50 countries to explore the theme of Moving Forward through strategic foresight, growth, and organizational culture. Among our keynote speakers are Simon Sinek, Rick Rubin, Angela Ahrendts, Jonah Berger, and many more inspiring thinkers and doers.
“We’ve been working with ESG and sustainability in a serious way since 2011,” says Hans-Peter Siefen, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Nordic Business Forum. “This Nordic Swan Ecolabel process was both a learning experience and a way to test where we really stand—and we were thrilled to see we met the requirements.”
What Does It Mean to Be a Nordic Swan Ecolabelled Event?
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel, supported by all Nordic authorities, is the official and most well-known environmental certification in its market. For events, it sets a wide range of comprehensive environmental criteria that cover everything from energy use and catering to waste management and logistics.
Some of the key requirements for Nordic Swan Ecolabelled events include:
- Prioritizing energy efficiency and renewable energy sources
- Reducing emissions from transport and logistics
- Offering sustainable food choices
- Minimizing single-use items and reusing decorations and materials
- Using ecolabelled cleaning and dishwashing products
- Involving staff, suppliers, and subcontractors in environmental practices
Building a Better Event—One Choice at a Time
At Nordic Business Forum, many of these practices were already part of our DNA:
“We’ve encouraged public transport for years, minimized giveaways, reused lanyards, and produced our event signage for multi-year use,” Siefen explains. “We’ve worked hard to reduce food waste, prioritized plant-based food, and when we serve meat, it’s always wild game or sustainably caught fish. A few years ago, we also switched from bottled water to tap water and eliminated disposable tableware from our buffets.”
Even with that foundation, the Nordic Swan Ecolabel process offered new insights.
“We learned a lot. It helped us improve things like our supplier requirements, especially for transportation and AV services. We also got better at sorting waste types for recycling, focused more on organic products in catering, and paid closer attention to the materials and printing methods we use for our printed items.”
A Nordic Example Worth Following
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel criteria cover a wide range of event types, from concerts and exhibitions to business seminars, political events, and sports competitions. It’s a powerful tool to help event organizers make more sustainable choices—and a signal of genuine responsibility to attendees, partners, and the wider public.
“I’m glad the event industry now has this kind of ecolabel,” Siefen concludes. “I truly hope it encourages more organizers to level up. We can all be part of the solution.”
