These days, we’re all trying to make our meetings and events more sustainable. But deciding what to do can be difficult.
Where should you start? What should you do? How do you know if you’ve made an impact?
We’ve put together some basic guiding principles to help you get going based on our own experience.
Online or on location?
Ask yourself if meeting face-to-face is necessary. Could you host a teleconference instead? We often organise webinars to train our projects or stream our larger events online so that participants don’t have to travel.
If you have to go on location, then make sure your venue is easy to get to by public transport or low-carbon transport options.
Choose green suppliers
Include sustainability in your procurement of external services. Make sure your suppliers:
- Serve fresh, organic and locally sourced food
- Have a food waste prevention strategy
- Use reusable and recyclable containers
- Make an effort to save electricity, water and reduce their CO2 emissions
Miia Itänen, our Communication Officer responsible for events, explained that ‘in our tender documents we always ask venues and suppliers to make sure that the event has the lowest environmental impact possible’.
At 'Europe let’s cooperate 2019', food was cooked on the spot to reduce the amount of food used.
Small changes do make a difference
Your event logistics should be green too:
- Try a paperless event (we always put everything online)
- Choose recycled materials or reuse old materials
- Avoid promotional gifts
For anyone who’s been to more than one of our events, it’s clear that we reuse our decorations. We've had the catch box and cardboard chairs since 2015!
Ask your participants for help
You can’t do it all on your own. Give your participants some tips on being green like reusing their hotel towel or bringing a reusable bottle of water.
Download our green checklist for more tips and tricks.
What about your project?
We want to hear from you! Let us know how you are making your project events greener. Contact your communication officer with your stories.
More information
- Download the United Nations' green meeting guide
- Become a partner and EU Green Week
- Sign up for the EU Sustainable Energy Week
Related news
![[News] Brescia: POSITIVE TREND FOR GREEN MOBILITY](/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_image_1618498072_4bb8e178cc.jpg)
[News] Brescia: POSITIVE TREND FOR GREEN MOBILITY
The city of Brescia and its province continue on the road to sustainable mobility

The Great Styrian Spring Clean-Up 2021
The Great Styrian Spring Clean- Up 2021 started on April 14 2021!
![[NEWS] BSC: Slovenian difficulties on green cars](/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_file_1618903926_8f187d055e.jpg)
[NEWS] BSC: Slovenian difficulties on green cars
Why is Slovenia lagging behind in achieving set goals of shifting to BEVs when it comes to personal cars?
Related events

Apr
22
2021
Matchmaking: Resource and energy efficiency support schemes...
On 22 April, the Policy Learning Platform is organising an online matchmaking session for the Region of Western Macedonia in Greece.

Apr
21
2021
6th steering committee - online
6th Steering meeting will be held online due to pandemic restrinctions

Apr
22
2021
Velenje, Slovenia
SI National Infoday, organized on the Earth day 2021
The Energy agency of Savinjska, Šaleška and Koroška region, KSSENA will organize the National Information Day event of the DeCarb project on the Earth day 2021.