Meetings and conferences can quickly become environmentally unfriendly without a bit of thought and planning, especially when delegates are travelling to your location and there is catering. So follow these tips to boost your sustainability credentials!
Focus on digital
Forget endless printouts and simply share agendas and papers digitally. If you choose a hotel conference venue like //tewkesburypark.co.uk/business, the business team can handle this for you and provide FSC-friendly paper when required.
Choose local catering
A catered meeting is important for an all-day event, but focus on local and seasonal catering from a local supplier if you can. This reduces food miles and impact and also supports the local economy. The hotel venue itself may also provide catering.
Remove plastics
Single-use plastics are a big environmental no-no, so have large glass carafes of water and glasses to drink from, rather than providing single-use water bottles. Equally, serve tea and coffee in proper china. Recycle any leftover packaging materials wherever possible.
Make virtual attendance possible
For delegates who simply may live too far away to travel easily and sustainably, offer virtual dial-in options so that they can still be involved, but not add fuel miles to the road and carbon emissions to the environment. Very often, it isn’t actually necessary for everyone to attend, so be very clear on your agenda and the reasons to ask people to join.
These tips will all help you to have a more sustainable conference and one that supports the environment, rather than adding to carbon emissions and creating waste.