Green Special: Spotlight on Seventeen Events

For events manager Andrew Williams, that's an argument that ignores the other important bonus of the sustainable approach.

He said: "The perception has been that people would need to put this on the back burner and come back to the green stuff in a couple of years.

"We say what we do is part and parcel of what companies need to do in the recession. It's about managing your resources more efficiently.

"If you have a fleet of cars and we make them more fuel-efficient, you get fewer expenses claims for petrol. If you have motion sensitive lights, you save money on your electricity bill.

"It might seem like a nice green thing to do but it does save money."

Andrew was a rock and pop buyer for Borders before he set up Seventeen events four years ago with Louise Davies, who managed events for The Guardian.

Their first job was to launch The Observer's Ethical Awards, at which point they realised how few businesses were travelling on the same road.

Andrew said: "The process of setting that up was a baptism of fire. It made us realise that we were doing something no one else was doing.

"From a personal perspective, it was something I was interested in but not from a professional point of view. It was all an emerging market."

Seventeen Events has since provided sustainable solutions for events such as the London South Bank University Village Fete and the 2008 Great Place To Work Conference Europe. The company also moved three years ago from Andrew's Limehouse flat to the container village in Trinity Buoy Wharf.

The company insists that sustainability is a defining characteristic of its work, but not a compromising factor.

Andrew said: "We want to create excellent events, first and foremost. But the green stuff is not an optional extra. It's not something we picked up along the way.

"Our background is in running events. We've worked with a lot of people who have sustainability qualifications but you need to have a good understanding of how everything fits together before you can apply that.

"The one thing we're always very keen on is not to go to people with a finger-wagging attitude. We want to help people realise what they can do in a positive way."

Go to seventeenevents.co.uk