We were delighted to hear that Lucille Warwick and Plenty Valley Christian College decided to run a carbon neutral art show by raising the funds needed to have 75 trees planted on their behalf.  We love events that have sustainably at their core. We organised the College’s 75 trees to be planted in the hills of Alexandra, Victoria.  

   

We planted 75 trees on a farm at Alexandra with a team of workers from the Dhurringile Prison Landmate Team. The fellas did a great job and I’d recommend the team to anyone that is undertaking large scale revegetation projects. The farm belongs to a couple of long-term landcare members who have done great revegetation work in the district over the past many years. Thanks very much to Fifteen Trees for supplying the plants and to Plenty Valley Christian College for running a carbon neutral event which meant that we received trees for one of our planting projects. I couldn’t get any close up photos of the team due to privacy reasons. Chris Cobern | Landcare Facilitator | Dhurringile Prison Landmate Team

      Here are some tips to running a carbon neutral event:

• Put someone in charge to ensure the small footprint theme is consistent and promote it as such.
• Produce an environmental policy for your conferences and meetings.
• On the registration website, offer attendees the option of buying a tree for planting by a local community group.
• Advise speakers about your small footprint event.
• Keep all participants informed about your small footprint event.
• Use/promote businesses that have green policies. Ask companies (e.g. the venue) for their policies and if they don’t have one, go elsewhere but tell them why! This is very powerful way to make businesses ‘step up’.
• Make it a ‘paper free’ event, or at the very least use double sided paper and recycled paper (best brands for 100% recycled paper include – Evolve, Vision and Fuji). Avoid Reflex who are using our native forests for their pulp supplies. Take the ‘ethic paper pledge‘ to help protect our native forests.
• Encourage public transport by offering prizes, discounts, free glass of wine etc when they present their train/bus ticket. Give instructions as to which tram, bus or train to take.
• Give promotional sustainable gifts that are made from local producers (with little/no packaging).
• Distribute a low ecological impact lanyard. Use regular thread with a knot/bead linking both extremes.
• Encourage recycling with simple systems.
• Offer only vegetarian meals. It won’t kill anyone to go without meat for a day or so.
• Don’t offer plastic water bottles. Have glasses and water jugs on hand. Ask the venue to adhere to this.
• If you must use plastic name tags, collect them at the end of the conference to reuse the next year.
• Don’t give out plastic straws! Ditch the straw. 

  Once again, big thank you to Plenty Valley Christian College for your support. Sláinte – Colleen