Posted by Johann Nacario — September 27, 2023 — The Salone del Mobile.Milano, the global benchmark event for the furnishing and design sector held every year in Milan, Italy, recently announced that it has been awarded ISO 20121 certification for sustainable events management.
The announcement was made alongside its participation in Sustainable Italy — a project promoted by the Italian Consulate General in New York, in collaboration with the Italian Trade Agency ICE and coordinated by the Embassy in Washington — at the Nest Climate Campus forum (September 19-21), which is being held as part of the Climate Week NYC (September 17-24) annual climate change and environmental sustainability event.
In the run-up to the Nest Climate Campus forum, the Salone del Mobile.Milano is reaffirming its own commitment to sustainable change, steering its business model along a path of responsible and inclusive development, that will act as a benchmark and an inspiration for the entire sector.
A great many objectives have already been achieved. First and foremost, the Salone del Mobile.Milano has been awarded ISO 20121 certification for sustainable events management, thanks to the work done to prevent, mitigate and offset any potential negative effects of the 2023 edition on the environment and/or on people. The verification process, which led to certification for sustainable events organization, was undertaken by the multinational certification company RINA.
This certification recognizes and rewards the Salone’s ethical and sustainable path, attests to greenwashing compliance, and will serve to steer the events management system towards continuous improvement. It also provides the basis on which the Salone is moving forward, reflecting rationally and laterally around achieving an “even more” ecological co-existence of fairs and the environment, in order to identify the next steps and actions to be taken to bring the sustainable transformation of the sector to completion.
To reaffirm its own commitment to a path of inclusive, responsible and sustainable development and to serve as an example and a stimulus for new resilient projects, the Salone del Mobile.Milano will be one of the 
protagonists of the Sustainable Italy initiative at the Nest Climate Campus forum, geared to promoting Italy’s ability and primacy in the field of environmental sustainability. Sustainable Italy will bring together a collection of the best case histories of Italian companies that have embarked on the path to genuine ecological and climate transition, brands that espouse sustainability as an essential growth factor and believe that it must be pursued, vertically, in all supply chains.
The Salone will contribute to the occasion with Design with Nature, the installation created together with the architect Mario Cucinella in 2022, as part of the 60th anniversary edition of the trade fair. The project discussed the themes of circular economy and reuse, based on the idea of cities as possible “reserves” of the future, in which many of the raw materials required for construction can be found.
By taking part in this occasion, the Salone will be bringing its own thinking around ethics, circularity, the domestic space, participatory architecture, urban regeneration and upcycling to the attention of an international audience of protagonists of cultural debate, in the belief that there will be those who will draw lessons and inspiration from this that will help accelerate the process of identifying effective solutions to limit the negative effects of climate change.
