Five Reasons Why Your Event should be Carbon Neutral

Five Reasons To Do A Carbon-Neutral Event                    

Scientists have long warned about climate change as one of the defining issues of our time. Increasingly, individuals, businesses and organisations share this view.The following text is a guide on how to create cutting-edge, carbon-neutral events. It also looks into why offsetting your event’s carbon footprint is good for the bottom line:

Builds Brand Awareness

Assuming responsibility for our negative impact on climate is not only morally just. It is also a great way to differentiate forward-thinking organisations from competitors. Companies with good environmental policy are believed to strive for operational excellence, too.

Boosts Marketing Effort

The feel-good factor associated with carbon-neutral events acts as an additional draw for potential exhibitors, lecturers or visitors.

Essential for Green Events

Offsetting emissions is particularly relevant for events built around an environmental theme. For example, since 2005 the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has worked with governments to offset the carbon footprint of the annual global climate change talks. Good examples are the meetings in Denmark in 2010, as well as in Lima, Peru in 2014, and Paris, France in 2015.

Join the Leaders

Influential trade events are already offsetting their footprint. This is the case with the Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest gathering for the mobile industry. Held in Barcelona, Spain, it was recognised as the world’s largest carbon-neutral trade show in 2015 and in 2016 by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Cost-effective Solution

Contrary to popular belief, a climate-friendly policy is not expensive. Some measures – such as paperless communication, ordering locally-sourced food and reusing materials – actually save money.Even when it comes to offsetting travel-related emissions, the biggest contribution to the footprint of events and conferences, costs can easily be incorporated in the price of a ticket. Yavor Vassilev, CEO and founder of CO2 Cards, a company that offers carbon-offsetting services, has calculated the cost of carbon neutrality for a two-day EU event with 60 per cent international travelers to be €1.5 per person.

Understanding the carbon footprint

In the broad sense, the carbon footprint of an event is the amount of green-house gasses released in the various activities necessary to create it. For example, the event venue usually needs to be lit, heated or cooled. To produce the electricity necessary for this, a certain amount of greenhouse gasses is released, forming part of the event’s footprint.What makes the biggest difference to footprint calculations is the decision to include emissions generated by participants travelling internationally to reach the venue. It is perfectly legitimate to look at country-specific emissions only. Including international travel is the more exhaustive approach. For events with many international participants, travel-related emissions can represent as much as 90 per cent of the entire carbon footprint.

Offsetting the carbon footprint

Even events powered by renewable energy and following strict measures on resource use and waste generation can’t achieve carbon neutrality without compensating travel related emissions. This can be easily achieved through International Carbon Offset mechanisms set by the United Nations and providing access to certified carbon credits from high impact carbon offset projects. It is important to choose credits issued by reputable bodies such as Gold Standard, Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS), UN Certified Emissions Reductions (CER), REDD+, etc.CO2 Cards provides access to a Global base of  Carbon offset projects like protecting Amazonian woods reforestation in Brazil, or replacing carbon intensive cook stoves with solar powered in rural areas in Africa.

Get your customers involved

To cover the cost of the CO2 credits, one option is to divide it equally among participants, said Mr Vassilev. Event organizers can also choose to focus only on domestic emissions, inviting international visitors to offset their travel footprint individually. The best way to do this is through online ticketing service providers and CO2 Cards has an easy to implement carbon calculating and offsetting tool for such platforms.

Brand your event green and start today by filling out our Free Assessment Form!

To learn more, please email us at office@co2cards.com

Yavor Vassilev, CEO  of CO2 Cards, is available to meet event professionals during Eventex 2017, held in Dublin, Ireland, from 24 to 26 January.

Book a meeting at yavorv@co2cards.com ; office@co2cards.com