RGS: our first carbon-tracked conference
This August, we’ll welcome over 2,000 delegates from Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2025 to campus in what’s likely to be our greenest conference yet. Event Project Manager Annaliese Stanton – who has overseen everything from procurement to menus, updates us on progress…
In my last post, I talked about the compostable disposables we going to use to serve our lunches including edible cups and seaweed-coated lunch containers.
That meant we needed to find a place to leave the temporary store for all the extra compostable waste. As part of our carbon accounting, we’ll also be ensuring that it’s weighed and that the road miles for the container delivery and pick up are included in our emissions calculations. I’m pleased to say that colleagues in a car parking team have come to the rescue and given us a space in a nearby car park for the duration of the event.
To accommodate up to 2,000 delegates each day, we will be serving all our food and drink in a marquee located in the Green Heart – the beautiful green space at the centre of campus, planted up with trees and shrubs. Our marquee provider has been assessed for their sustainable credentials, and we have also ensured that the marquee used for the conference will stay on-site for a further month to accommodate further University events, reducing the number of road miles for construction and de-rigging.
Communication about our sustainable practices is a key part of our event planning. In partnership with our comms team, we have created a bespoke event website which includes details of our sustainable practices, delegate travel and accommodation as well as details of how we’re supporting delegate welfare with free entrance to the cultural attractions, including Winterbourne House and Garden.
We’ve also thought creatively about the materials used for our in-venue signage and banners and have discovered recyclable banners made from preserved reindeer moss! Any other signage will be kept to a minimum will use recyclable FSC-certified card and we’ll be decorating our tables with plants grown at nearby Winterbourne House and Gardens.
Finally, we have been running a pilot project measuring the carbon footprint of a selection of events held at the University. The RGS conference organisers have agreed to be part of the project and will be sharing the travel and set-up details to help us gain an in-depth understanding of how we can minimise the environmental impact events held at the University.
It’s fantastic to see how much we can improve the carbon footprint of large conferences like this one. And we’re so grateful to have so much support and enthusiasm from RGS and the University who have encouraged us to do things differently. We’ve learnt so much in the run-up to RGS, which will impact how we run all our events in the future.
Interested in sustainable conferences? Contact Annaliese Stanton to find out how we’re going the extra mile to create events that don’t cost the earth.
