Green Meetings

Green Meeting

• A green meeting is organized and implemented in a manner that lessens the impact on the environment and socially impacts the host community in a positive manner.¹
• Green meetings attempt to reduce waste and energy consumed at each stage of the meeting.²
• Checklists created by the Environment Protection Agency,1 United Nations,³ and International Standard Organization (ISO) 201214 provide a blueprint for meeting organizers.
• Having a voluntary/mandatory contribution to offset CO2 emissions can be helpful. In a 2017 study of 116 international/national academic conferences, only 4% (n=5) offered carbon-offset options for participants and 9% (n=11) advertised any efforts to mitigate the meeting’s environmental impact.⁵
  • Arguably, purchasing carbon offsets does not reverse the damaging impact of the meeting. Additionally, the scale and cost to actually offset emissions may be too high to make a substantial difference.⁶
• A study completed a life cycle assessment of an international conference in Europe. The authors then simulated three environmental impact reduction strategies: switching to vegetarian meals, eliminating the printed booklet and bag, and reducing air travel by having participants traveling by train within an 8-hour travel distance.⁴
  • These measures together resulted in a nearly 10% reduction in both the total global warming potential (GWP 100 years) and abiotic depletion potential (fossil). Eco-toxicity was decreased by 13.⁵%.⁴
  • Hotel overnight stays contributed a significant amount to some of the impact categories, such as GWP, but was not included as a strategy because the authors deemed hotel stays as unavoidable, less eco-toxic than the other strategies, and depended on individual hotel practices.⁴
• Hybrid meetings, with carefully chosen hubs, can reduce the carbon footprint and energy use by up to two-thirds.⁷
• Completely virtual meetings reduced emissions by 94% and energy use by 90%.⁷
  • In order to increase engagement and collaboration during and after virtual conferences, organizers should record content, disperse presentation slides and hand-outs, provide presenter contact information, and open question-and-answer sessions to all participants. These practices could help improve diversity, equity, and inclusion and facilitate career advancement.⁷
• Publishing and disseminating a meeting’s green efforts helps hold conference organizers accountable and encourages meeting attendees to value green meetings.
  • However, a study of international conferences revealed that only 9% of conferences announced measures to reduce environmental impacts.⁵

Travel

• Air travel is one the fastest growing causes of global warming.⁴
• A life cycle assessment of an international conference held in Europe found travel, specifically long air travel, to be the dominant contributor to the conference’s environmental impact.⁴
• Centrally locating the conference and utilizing an area that is well-connected to other modalities of mass transportation can help mitigate the environmental impact caused by air travel.⁴
• A carbon footprint evaluation of an academic conference held in Slovenia found that while only 10% of participants live outside of Europe, those participants contributed 50% of the emissions.⁸
• Some airlines and car rental companies have their own carbon-offset programs.⁹

Food

• Meat and seafood meals are shown to have a negative impact in all environmental impact categories examined.¹⁰
  • Offering a vegetarian day during the conference8 or switching to a completely vegetarian menu will reduce the environmental impact.
  • A smaller conference could lend itself to working with a local executive chef who serves locally grown and sustainable food.²
• To reduce waste related to food, one-time use cups, silverware, and plates should be eliiminated2 and attendees should be encouraged to bring their own water bottles.

Venue/Hotels

• The location of the venue and hotels should be near mass transit and/or walkable.²
• Environmental impacts from hotel stays largely depend on the business practices of the hotels.⁵
  • Conference organizers should evaluate the hotels’ sustainability practices and green certifications, such as Energy Star or Green Seal program.²
• Meetings could encourage participants during registration to share hotel rooms to mitigate the amount of energy used.⁵
• Conference planners should seek out convention centers, such as the Vancouver Convention Center that are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified.⁹
  • US Convention Centers that Platinum LEED certified:10
  • Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR
  • Monona Terrace Convention Center, Madison, WI
  • David L Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, PA
    There are 29 US Convention Centers that are Gold LEED certified.¹⁰