CHICAGO — Net Zero Carbon Events is progressing in developing guidelines as part of the roadmap launched last November. The initiative is now in its third phase of operations and, during a webinar on February 15, 2023, the different working teams of the initiative gave presentations on what they are doing in this phase to achieve the goal of launching the roadmap and methodology in November 2023 at COP 28the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
The Measurement, Carbon Offset and Reporting workstreams address the more technical side of the initiative, while the Place Energy, Smart Production and Waste Management, Food and Food Waste, Logistics and Travel and Accommodation workstreams focus on priority areas for action.
The Food and Food Waste Task Force’s actions included easy-to-implement ideas such as reducing the number of meat dishes offered at an event, sourcing food locally and partnering with a food bank or composting machine to reduce waste. The Logistics Task Force focused on reducing traffic demand at events by consolidating products in warehouses, which helps reduce emissions from transporting materials.
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Introducing the Offsetting Working Group, Alex Alles, Executive Director of JMIC, said: “We understand that the topic of carbon offsetting is highly controversial, and the roadmap makes it clear that carbon offsetting in and of itself is certainly not the answer to carbon neutrality. It can be seen as an intermittent measure to mitigate the impact of carbon emissions, but the goal of every company should be to avoid emissions rather than to offset them.”
The common challenge identified by the working groups is that the events sector does not have a global standardised reporting system or a standard metric system to measure carbon footprint. The next step for the initiative is to develop standard metrics, reporting systems and methodologies that can be used across the sector to get a more accurate picture of what events are currently doing and can do in the future to help achieve net zero, while being able to view all reported information in a comparable way.
“We have found that collaboration with other working groups is essential. To move forward, we need to collaborate and finalize the measurements and reports,” says Edwin Van der Vennet, owner and Chief !nnovation and Sustainability Officer at beMatrix and chair of the Smart Production & Waste Management working group. “We have gathered best practices and the idea is to produce a comprehensive document. It is very important to define the main challenges. Once these challenges are defined, we now need to see if these can be transformed into opportunities.”
Find the latest information on Net Zero Carbon events here.
Contact Alex Alles at jmic@themeetingsindustry.com; Edwin Van der Vennet at +32 51 20 07 50 Or e.vandervennet@beMatrix.com