A carbon-conscious event case study
What we did to measure, reduce and offset the carbon impact of Meaning 2016.
When we started planning Meaning’s 2016 conference, we wanted to deal with a niggling question: In our desire to convene a community for positive impact, was our event actually going to have a negative effect on the planet?
Getting people together in a room to learn, connect and inspire each other is a very special thing. But we’re painfully aware that conferences like ours come with a hefty environmental footprint. Transport, catering, energy and publicity materials all combine to consume resources and contribute to waste and carbon emissions.
We knew we had to try to do something differently. So we set out to…
- plan Meaning 2016 with waste reduction front of mind
- measure and benchmark our impact, enabling us to improve year on year
- use the opportunity to create greater awareness with event participants
- act as a live case study — sharing our journey with other event organisers and driving better practice
We involved our friends at Creative Bloom, who know a thing or two about sustainability and how to communicate it. They helped us prepare, advised us on some key decisions and — importantly — collated and crunched the data to form a picture of Meaning 2016’s environmental impact.
Transport
Mindful of the carbon footprint associated with travel, we encouraged Meaning attendees to make smart transport choices where possible — choosing rail over car, choosing bike over bus. And we gathered data about the choices they made with the help of some very nice maps lent to us by The Future Mapping Company.
How the participants travelled to Meaning…
A conference the scale of Meaning brings speakers and delegates from far away. And, as you can see below, just a few flights can have a big effect on the overall greenhouse gas footprint of an international event.
Let’s look at the role of that air travel within the overall carbon footprint of Meaning 2016…
This is the most challenging issue for us. When we invite speakers to come to Brighton with their powerful messages of positive change, should we consider where they’re coming from? Do we invite fairly interesting speakers from Surrey, or world-changing ones from North America? (No offence, conference speakers of Surrey). It’s a difficult balance to strike and one we’re thinking hard about.
The verdict: Develop and share travel impact reduction recommendations for Meaning participants early in the year. Encourage self-organised innovations like lift-shares and bike-trains.
Waste
How many conferences have you attended where there’s an abundance of promotional flyers, giveaways, balloons, bags and tat? We don’t think you come to a conference like Meaning to gather rubbish for your bin, so without that, our waste output is already way below that of many other events.
And we’ve ensured our banners and stage sets can be used for future events by not including year-specific information on them.
The verdict: Design conference collateral to be practical and reusable. And make sure you have a plan for where to store it between events. (Thanks Gene Commerce for looking after ours — we really appreciate it!)
Catering
What about food and drink? Standard conference catering often involves fast food, throwaway plates, single-use cups, and those stupid little plastic stirrers. Instead we opted for proper plates, glasses, mugs and cutlery. This isn’t just an issue of waste —good food tastes better that way.
Lunch itself was vegetarian, locally sourced and seasonal — keeping its footprint as low as possible. We’re very lucky in Brighton to have access to not only responsible, smart caterers like The Secret Restaurant, but to the amazing Real Junk Food Coop, who gratefully received any surplus food generated by Meaning. ‘Feeding bellies, not bins’, as they say!
The verdict: Vegetarian food has a far lower carbon footprint especially if it’s seasonal and local. It’s also a lot cheaper!
A team effort
We found that working with our venue and suppliers was absolutely vital to reducing the environmental impact of Meaning. Brighton Dome and The Secret Restaurant were great — as keen as we were to listen, experiment and drive towards better practice.
The verdict: Choose the right partners and make it a mutually beneficial collaboration. This is a great opportunity to influence others.
The power of small actions
At Meaning we asked participants to consider ways to make small but significant changes in their personal consumption habits. Did you make a pledge? How is it going?
The verdict: Use the opportunity to have conversations with your community. Don’t just do the right thing — spread the right thing.
Measurement
We managed to get travel data from about a third of our participants which was enough to extrapolate an average but didn’t feel rigorous enough.
We weren’t able to get accurate waste data from the waste service provider at the venue so we had to go through an annoying manual process to get close to an realistic estimate of our actual waste tonnage.
The verdict: If you’re serious about improving then measurement is important and a thorough plan needs to be in place for capturing data.
So what next?
We’ve added up the numbers and we know that Meaning contributed around 18 tonnes of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. We offset that using a service called Stand for Trees. We don’t want to use this method to let ourselves off the hook. The priority is to reduce our impact, not compensate for it. But when it costs so little, there’s really no excuse not to offset what you can’t avoid. We donated $250 to a tree-planting programme in Brazil to offset 25 tonnes (we rounded up just to be on the safe side).
But most importantly, our task now is to bring everything we’ve learned into our planning for Meaning 2017.
Using our 2016 figures as a benchmark, we’ll be looking for ways to further improve Meaning’s environmental credentials. We continue to believe that we can bring positive change by convening forward-thinking business people to inspire each other — but that we have a responsibility to do so with minimal environmental cost.
Spreading the word
We want to create a ripple effect by sharing our learnings. We’re talking to the organisers of other conferences, sharing our data, pooling ideas and challenging ourselves and others to try harder.
Creative Bloom has a really useful checklist so ensure you start asking the right questions when planning your next meeting or company event.
If you’re an event organiser and would like to know more about our experiences please don’t hesitate to get in touch via team@meaningconference.co.uk :)
Meaning is the annual gathering for people who believe business can and must be a force for positive change in our dynamic and volatile world.
At Meaning you’ll learn from the pioneers from the edges, who are driving change at the heart of business. And you’ll connect with like-minded peers who want to be part of the solution.
The next edition is happening on 16 November 2017 in Brighton, UK. Find out more via our website. Or follow us on Twitter.
