Event Focus – SERA Conference 2018

LOUD’s War on Waste – Achieving Your Event Objectives on Multiple Levels

The LOUD team recently had the pleasure of working with the Society of Ecological Restoration (SERA) on their Australasia Conference, held at the University of Queensland St Lucia Campus.

SERA is dedicated to providing education, specialised training, and networking opportunities for ecological and environmental professionals working together to meet the challenges of ecosystem restoration.

LOUD worked closely with the organising committee to not only bring the conference together, but successfully achieve one of the main objectives – to create a conference with the least environmental impact.

In our current society and in an event industry that is largely single use, this is not as easy as it seems. Here are a few of the things that the LOUD conference team did with mindfulness and consideration to help reduce the waste created by the event:

• Requesting and ensuring caterers only supply reusable crockery, cutlery and glassware
• Reskinning banners from a previous conference rather than utilising new
• Satchels were sourced locally and made from a vegetable fibre fabric. We ensured that the design was sturdy so that these bags will be reused for years to come.
• Collecting all lanyards and pouches at the end of the event for reuse
• Donating lectern signs and any excess single sided printing to a local kindergarten to use for craft
• Instead of a bowl of mints individually wrapped in plastic, LOUD provided a complimentary bowl of apples which was replenished throughout the conference
• Ensuring no plastic straws were available at the gala dinner (not that any of the delegates would have taken them!)
• All paper / cardboard was recycled if unable to be used again
• All lunch boxes for field trips were packed into brown paper bags instead of plastic boxes. Fruit was already packed in its own skin!
• Book of abstracts and conference program was available online and not printed
• Final delegate confirmation included reminders about bringing water bottles and keep cups. Over the 3 days of the conference with 350 delegates per day, only 3 disposable coffee cups were spotted and a veritable rainbow of keep cups!

It felt good to walk away from the conference without leaving piles of rubbish behind and know that our effort, albeit small would make an impact on our earth.

What are you going to do to reduce the environmental impact at your next event?