The meetings industry is a huge creator of waste. The average meeting attendee is estimate to produce over 8kg of waste, and that can be significantly more at large Events. At COP15 we measured the waste footprint to be 3 tons per person!
Thankfully we all are learning and I am very happy to see that at the UN Corporate Sustainability Forum in Rio, working together with the UN Global Compact, we have managed to reduce waste significantly by implementing the UN’s PaperSmart guidelines, and consequently eliminating brochures, handouts and program guides. We even managed to engage exhibitors in eliminating all handouts on their stands. In place of the tons of paper we introduced a mobile app from QuickMobile. At the moment it looks like waste will be less than a 1kg per person.
Working together with the Hotel Windsor Barra, we expect that at least 50% of this waste will be recycled, with the hotel earning profit from the sale of this material. You can ready more about the other sustainability initiatives here:
I was sent this excellent infographic today which nicely summed up the waste challenge and serves to remind us the advantages of using technology and thinking out of the box with a goal to reduce waste upstream, and reuse and recycle downstream.
Created by: BusinessDegree.net
Filed under: Meetings and Events Tagged: | Global Compact, Rio+20, waste
