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EDUCAUSE 2008–Green Conferencing Done Right

It’s not easy to make a large conference truly environmentally friendly. Venue, decorations, food and water, travel—all these factors have to be accounted for. The organizers of one conference found a way to do it right, thanks to a combination of forward-thinking planning and offsets from Carbonfund.org.

While many of us were donning ghostly and ghastly costumes this Halloween, attendees of the EDUCAUSE 2008 conference were being treated to an eco-friendly event. Urged by conference attendees from previous years, EDUCAUSE listened and launched a green initiative to reduce the footprint of the participants’ travel, hotel stays and the venue itself. Those who spoke up should feel especially proud that they’ve helped fight something truly scary: global warming.

So how did they do it?

The standard offerings and suppliers to large conferences aren’t always the most environmentally friendly options, so executing a green conference that is defensible against claims of green-washing takes time and teamwork. Finding the right place to host more than 4,000 people requires careful consideration of location, accessibility, availability of lodging and actual venue size. In addition to those key criteria, the organizers of EDUCAUSE 2008 put in the extra time to find a site with a robust Environmental Management System.

Their final venue selection, the Orange County Convention Center, boasted recovery rates of 80 percent of all dry waste and 40 percent of all waste in 2006, diverting 9,000 tons of material for remanufacture, and recycling 871 tons of cardboard and 5.8 tons of office paper. If that’s not impressive enough, the convention center provided EDUCAUSE attendees water in coolers and pitchers rather than bottles, saving a huge amount of resources. It used corn-based compostable clamshell box lunches and flatware, served condiments in bulk rather than individual packaging, and donated leftover food to a local food bank. Beyond these individual-oriented efforts, Orange County Convention Center boasts technologically sophisticated energy and water systems to reduce electricity and water use.

Once the venue is chosen, how can you be sure that everything going into it passes muster on an ecological scale? Well, it certainly helps to select a show decorator that is thinking as far up- and downstream as you are in its business practices. EDUCAUSE 2008’s decorator posts its exhibit kits online rather than as paper versions. Beyond that, 100% of the carpet, along with the aluminum from the entrance signs, has now been recycled into useful materials rather than ending up in a landfill, and the decomposable banners are most likely being carried around as reusable shopping bags.

After these concerted efforts to reduce consumption and waste from the conference, the organizers of EDUCAUSE realized that getting more than 4,000 people to and from the convention center involves a lot of travel. Whether in the air or on the ground, those who decided to attend the show were each individually responsible for some carbon dioxide emitted into the air. The organizers decided to include a $5/person fee that would go entirely towards carbon offsets through Carbonfund.org. This amount was determined only after analyzing the conference’s projected carbon footprint months in advance, and calculating that with a projected number of registrants, the total pounds of carbon dioxide offset should be enough to mitigate travel emissions.

As a result of EDUCAUSE’s dedication to making the 2008 conference greener, Carbonfund.org is proud to say that over 8.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide are being offset to balance the travel by participants. Through its example, EDUCAUSE has raised awareness and supported projects that are leading to a more sustainable future.