In essence, sustainable events are not just about ‘doing the right thing’, but also about creating a positive impact on the environment, enhancing brand image, boosting attendee experience, and promoting a culture of environmental responsibility. Your event may even inspire your attendees to adopt eco-friendly practices in their own lives. 

You will attract eco-conscience attendees, sponsors and media attention (your marketing people will love you)! Attendees appreciate the efforts of a sustainable conference and are more likely to feel positive about the event. 

– 13 ideas to help you run a small footprint event –

1. Put someone in charge to ensure the small footprint theme is consistent and promote it as such.
2. Produce an environmental policy for future conferences and meetings.
3. Advise speakers about your small footprint event and ask them to consistently keep participants informed.
4. Don’t laminate! Do you really need your signs to outlast us all?
5.  Use a venue that has sustainable policies, are powered by renewable energy, and have a food waste plan.
6. Make it a ‘paper free’ event, or at the very least use double sided pages and recycled paper (best brands include Evolve, Vision and Fuji).
7. Encourage public transport by offering prizes, discounts, free glass of wine etc when they present their train/bus card. Give instructions to attendees as to which tram, bus or train will get them to the event.
8. Give promotional sustainable gifts that are made from local producers.
9. Encourage recycling with a simple bin system.
10. Offer only vegetarian/vegan meals. Plant based food has a lower carbon footprint. Work with caterers who use local and in-season produce.
11. Don’t offer plastic water bottles. Have glasses and water jugs on hand. Ask the venue to adhere to this.
12. If you must use plastic name tags, collect them at the end of the conference to reuse the following year.
13. Through out the event, have a small competition asking attendees to send in photos (#sustainableme) to your socials. Show the photos throughout the course of the day, and give ‘on the spot prizes’, like a free drink from the bar, or maybe a small native plant.

Fifteen Trees can help make your event just that little greener by organising the planting of one tree for each attendee at a cost of $9.65/tree (includes GST).  The trees will be planted by community groups (such as schools and Landcare). Once planted, you will be able to see photos of the trees and read the comments by the community groups who have planted them. You can use these images on your website to promote your green policies. This is a tangible and visible contribution to Australian forest restoration projects and will resonate deeply with your attendees. Purchase trees here.

It’s not so hard to ensure your events are sustainable, it just takes a little forward planning and a couple of switched-on colleagues to work with. Go all out and ‘up the ante’ at your event this year.

We’d love to know how you go! Did you hit any snags and if so, how did you work around them? Let me know via <[email protected]> so I can update this article with your creative suggestions.

Writer – Colleen Filippa

With a background in Environmental Science, Colleen is the Founding Director of Fifteen Trees. In 2009, after 20 years in primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions, Colleen left the classroom to start the company. Fifteen Trees is a social enterprise assisting individuals and companies to reduce their carbon footprint by supporting community groups such as Landcare.