People Make Glasgow Greener

Glasgow aspires to become one of Europe’s leading sustainable tourism destinations. The city has an overall goal to be carbon neutral by 2030 and acknowledges the destination’s role in promoting and encouraging responsible tourism.

Our credentials

Glasgow is currently ranked 6th in the world on the Global Destination Sustainability Index (GDS-Index).  In August 2016, Glasgow became the first city in the UK to be included in this new sustainability ranking of leading international conference destinations that aims to bring destinations together to benchmark and improve the social and environmental performance of their respective meetings industries by highlighting best practice and promoting responsible business tourism.

In 2017, Glasgow Convention Bureau become the first ever convention bureau to win a Green Tourism Award, the world’s largest certification programme of its kind and the go-to standard for sustainable tourism. Organisations are assessed on their green credentials with Glasgow Convention Bureau awarded a ‘Silver’ grading for demonstrating a progressive approach and commitment to sustainability.

In 2021 Glasgow became the first UK city to achieve EarthCheck Benchmarked Community Status. Based on the fundamental belief that ‘what gets measured, gets managed’ the EarthCheck Sustainable Destinations program helps communities to measure and monitor their environmental economic, and social impact, and prepare and track that performance against their own targets and the performance of other destinations across the world. Glasgow is proud to have been benchmarked Bronze by EarthCheck.

In 2021 Glasgow Convention Bureau also became the first convention bureau in the world to join the Tourism Declares initiative, which aims to inspire and encourage all sectors of the travel industry - including Operators, Agents, Platforms, DMCs, Tourism Boards, Trade Associations, Hotel chains, Academia, Airlines, Media and Service Providers - to acknowledge the climate emergency and develop appropriate action plans. View our Tourism Declares statement. 

We continue to build on our existing credentials to further support the city in achieving its sustainable objectives and play a greater role in helping to make Glasgow greener.

View transcript

"Scottish Renewables holds numerous events in the city throughout the year including a growing number of headline conferences. We’re proud to work with venues in Glasgow, many of which are proactively adopting sustainable practices that are very much aligned with our own goals and ambitions."

Carly Thompson, Events Manager at Scottish Renewables