Why Sustainable Conferences Are Important
Image courtesy of Gary Chan on Unsplash
Sustainability is so much more than a huge buzzword at the moment. It also happens to be a topic that can sometimes be confusing on where/when to start implementing or take action. However, there are plenty of facts that illustrate the problems we are already facing that can serve as great guidelines or starting points.
Did you know that 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted globally each year? Or that there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050? These facts are astonishing and the implications will come to surface in our lifetime. This has a drastic effect on our environment, the animals, and ecosystems that share it. Things need to change! Our throw-away society is seriously damaging the environment and it’s up to politicians, industries, companies, and individuals to drive change.
The events industry has recently launched a vision to become waste-free by 2020. This is a big task to face but something that can be achieved with small changes. Here we explain why sustainable conferences are important, and a few things you can implement when planning your conference to play your part in the change.
Why is sustainability important?
We only have one planet and our destructive actions as a collective human race are leading to its rapid deterioration. Plastic is swamping our oceans, greenhouse gas emissions are damaging our atmosphere and our waste is being dumped into a landfill. Think of it this way, if everyone made small sustainable changes it would all add up, reducing serious damage to our environment. Climate change is everyone’s responsibility and the events industry should be contributing, too.
Leading by example
Leading by example is an important step in climate change. Events agencies and companies will be inspired by your quest to organize a sustainable conference, learning from your ideas and taking inspiration from your event. If a future conference becomes sustainable because of your actions, that’s a great result.
Organizing a sustainable conference and showing how easily corporations can help the environment can only have a positive impact on your attendees. You could be showing attendees a new way to recycle or to save energy, or giving attendees a new perspective on sustainability. Your attendees will hopefully be inspired to make small positive changes towards sustainability.
You may see an increase in attendees and staff as people are naturally drawn towards more ethically conscious companies. Because sustainability is so important at the moment, if you are seen to be organizing more sustainable conferences, you may also receive more interest from investors and sponsors. They will be proud to support ethical and sustainable events. So not only will it have a positive impact on the environment, but will also have a positive impact on your business. Win-win.
Positive impact on the environment
Conferences are huge events with even larger guest lists. How many conferences does your company hold a year? And how many companies are there in your country? That’s a lot of conferences!
Conferences require a lot of energy and produce a lot of waste. Whether it’s the carbon footprint of conference attendees or the amount of un-recyclable waste, reversing these damaging effects will have a positive impact on the environment, which is why a move towards organizing more sustainable conferences is so vitally important.
HOW TO PLAN A SUCCESSFUL CONFERENCE
Now we’ve talked about the importance of sustainable conferences, we want to give you a few easy ways you can ensure your conferences are more sustainable.
From small steps to huge overhauls, if you can implement a few of these changes, we would all be looking at a more sustainable future. We’ve pulled together two main things you should consider when organizing a conference.
Venue
We understand that a lot of what determines whether your conference is sustainable or not is the type of venue you choose. We know that most venues don’t yet advertise whether or not they’re sustainable.
But by asking conscious questions about the venue’s sustainability on-site visits or in early communication, you should have no problem finding venues that are in line with your sustainability goals when planning a conference.
Venues have a big responsibility. The hospitality and the events industry produce a lot of waste. When you think about food waste, excessive plastic packaging on goods, and energy use, venues often have to make a lot of changes in order to move towards a sustainable future.
But positive change is happening. In London for example, many venues are joining the Evening Standard’s Last Straw Campaign, an initiative to ban single-use plastic straws. Plastic straws are the fifth most common item of rubbish and are capable of seriously harming marine life. They are used for 20 minutes on average, but take up to 500 years to break down. So this is a huge step towards a more sustainable future.
An easy way to make your conference more sustainable is ensuring your conference venue is easily accessible and centrally located. This means less carbon emissions from transport. If you make sure your venue is close enough for caterers, guests, speakers, and sponsors, you will be able to reduce the carbon footprint of your event. Now, we know this is no mean feat. But, for example, if your conference is in London, making it as central as possible would mean the transport requirements for every single attendee is reduced, similarly for New York, Paris or Madrid.
Although venues have lots of potentially damaging effects on the environment, small changes go a long way. Ditching single-use plastic straws, increasing recycling and lowering food waste are all things which will positively contribute to the bigger picture. If the venue isn’t aware of these things, you as an event planner should feel encouraged to suggest small changes or requirements for your event. You never know, you might change their perspective entirely.
Recycling
Did you know that recycling every issue of The New York Times on one single day could save 75,000 trees? Or that Americans will use over 2.5 million plastic bottles every 30 minutes? Most of them are simply thrown away rather than recycled.
These hard-hitting facts are exactly what the events industry should use as motivation. Making changes to your event means you lead by example in the industry. Be the leaders of change. Not only does your event have a positive impact as a whole, it will also hopefully have an effect on every individual involved in bringing your event to life. If each attendee learned one thing about becoming more sustainable and then goes on to make a positive change in their own lives, then your event would have a wonderfully positive effect on the environment.
Recycling at your event will have a huge impact on the sustainability of your event. In this modern age, our throwaway habits mean most things we use are single use or thrown away after a couple of uses. Most of the time these things are made from plastic, the hardest material to recycle and degrade. Therefore, recycling is so important to making valuable contributions to protecting our environment. A huge event like a conference is a big opportunity to recycle a lot of materials. If this was done as standard across every conference in the state or country, imagine the impact on the environment.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Organizing a sustainable conference doesn’t have to be daunting. It’s all about making small changes with attainable goals in mind. A small action is better than no action. Aim to make one positive sustainable change for your next conference, and a second positive change for the event that follows, and so on. You’ll be on your way to a sustainable conference in no time.
So, it’s obvious why sustainable conferences are important. But are you up to the challenge to make your future greener?
Guest Author Bio: Liv is the Digital Content Executive at HeadBox. HeadBox is the UK’s only SaaS-enabled online marketplace where you can instantly search, book and pay for inspiring meeting, off-site and event spaces.
Be more sustainable! Even the smallest change toward sustainability benefits your event lifecycle and the environment. Consider donating leftover meals to start: