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How sustainable are sustainability conferences? – comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of an International Conference Series in Europe
Abstract
Scientific conferences are a widely established and a highly important and an indispensable component for knowledge sharing, networking activities, scientific debate etc. What is usually ignored is the resource demand of such an event, putting an enormous burden on the environment. For almost two decades now, there has been an increasing demand for mitigation of environmental impacts of scientific conferences. In the field of sustainability science hardly any measures have been taken as only one out of ten sustainability conferences promoted action to reduce environmental impacts. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has not been carried out for all phases of a conference. This study therefore strives to conduct a comprehensive LCA of a scientific conference held on sustainability topics. The assessment includes three main parts: 1) preparation of the conference, 2) conference execution, and 3) further pre-/post-conference activities (participants´ travel associated with the conference). The functional unit is defined as: Holding one 3-day international academic conference on sustainability topics. The results display that travel activities of participants dominantly contribute to the overall environmental impact. Further relevant phases are catering, hotel overnight stays as well as environmental burdens associated with the conference venue. It was found that the conference under consideration leaves a carbon footprint of 455 tonnes of CO2 eq., equivalent to an average of 0.57 tonnes per participant. A scenario analysis displayed that changes towards train travelling, vegetarian meals and reduction of conference materials can significantly better the environmental profile of a conference. Further measures of environmental optimization could be identified, e.g. digital meetings. It is however unlikely that those will totally replace physical meetings. The social benefits of direct personal and globally-oriented exchange can probably not be outweighed by environmental savings. Future conference planning should thus relate the sustainability benefits with the detrimental impacts.
... Among these, a few studies also considered virtual and hybrid conferences, either treating them as carbon-neutral scenarios (Jäckle, 2019;van Ewijk & Hoekman, 2021) or assessing their footprint in a simplified way (Burtscher et al., 2020;Klöwer et al., 2020). Some studies adopted a broader scope and conducted comprehensive life cycle assessments (LCA) of in-person conferences' impacts (Astudillo & AzariJafari, 2018;Hischier & Hilty, 2002;Neugebauer et al., 2020), considering activities other than delegate travel, such as accommodation, and impact categories other than climate change, such as human toxicity, thus providing richer insights to organizers. Among these, Hischier and Hilty (2002) also considered the virtual format, even if modeled through a conjectural scenario, whereas none assessed comprehensively the impacts of a hybrid conference. ...
... As an alternative to our FU, Hischier and Hilty (2002) and Neugebauer et al. (2020) refer to "holding a 3-days conference" in their single case studies, but such an FU would not be suitable for comparing multiple conferences with different sizes and durations. A per participant-day FU may instead sound reasonable having conferences with different durations, but we did not adopt it for two reasons: (i) all in-person conferences in our sample had the same duration when considering pre-conference events, which is quite standard in the OM&OR field; (ii) for virtual conferences, as we show in Section 3, duration is not clearly related to how much people attend the event, which makes it a not relevant functional characteristic-based on our experience, this is the case for in-person conferences too, as attendance is largely constrained by other professional/private commitments. ...
... To define the system boundary, we mostly referred to Neugebauer et al. (2020) and Tao et al. (2021), the only studies that considered the overall life cycle impacts of academic conferences. We further integrated input from Cavallin Toscani et al. (2022), who provided a comprehensive life cycle representation for any type of event. ...
This study contributes to the debate on the environmental impacts of academic conferences by comparing the life cycle impacts of a sample of real‐world in‐person, virtual, and hybrid conferences with different features and organizers. Results show that virtual formats reduce impacts by two to three orders of magnitude across all impact categories (for global warming, averagely from 941.9 to 1.0 kg CO2eq per person). The hybrid case study, with a share of 69% virtual attendees, displays an average 60% reduction in indicator results, less than ideal cases where the farthest attendees join online. The cross‐conference comparison allowed identifying several drivers of impact variation. For in‐person conferences, some never addressed drivers were uncovered, including the energy sources and systems used to supply the venue or the number of non‐local staff members and exhibitors. For virtual conferences, the main impact driver is the average time spent online by delegates, surprisingly more related to virtual experience design (e.g., synchronous vs. asynchronous presentations) than conference duration. The study further summarizes mitigation options from the literature and proposes new ones, such as selecting a venue supplied by a biomass‐fueled district heating system or with a green electricity contract (around −41 and −1.9 kg CO2eq per person, respectively). Lastly, our work highlights some inconsistencies that affect current conference assessments and proposes new research avenues, advocating the need to shift the focus from optimizing single conferences to considering the optimal portfolio of conferences and other activities for academic societies to meet their members’ needs while minimizing environmental impacts.
... Scholars have been proposing many policies to reduce the carbon footprint of conferences, such as meeting location optimisation [10,23], promoting land transport [24], increasing the carbon tax on flights [21] and hybrid meeting models [25]. However, some scholars consider online meetings to be an utterly carbon-reducing meeting model, ignoring the energy consumption of a single person during a videoconference, the network infrastructure consumption of videoconferencing, and other greenhouse gas emissions [9,26]. ...
... The LCA method has been used to calculate the carbon footprint of the meeting life cycle. However, studies mainly focused on quantifying the carbon footprint of in-person meetings [24,32] and have paid little attention to other impact categories, focusing mainly on the carbon footprint calculation of round-trip transportation [14,33], also considering the life cycle stages of meeting catering, accommodation and transportation [9,23]. The conferences carbon footprint ranges from 92 to 3540 kg per capita, depending on the duration, size and location of the meeting [26], and almost all of these studies consider transportation as the significant share of carbon emissions from meetings (ranging from 50% to 90%) [22], especially from air travel [34]. ...
... We calculated the activities, services or actions that generate CO 2 during the conference's holding to describe the academic conference's carbon footprint [35]. In conjunction with Neugebauer et al.'s approach [24], we divided the workshop carbon footprint assessment into three parts: workshop preparation, execution, and additional activities (workshop-related travel of attendees). Phase 1, workshop preparation, includes workshop committee preparation prior to the workshop opening, including printing of workshop materials, workshop webpage creation, and preparation of materials for the workshop organisation. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic led much of the conferences and education from in-person to online, significantly reducing the conferences and education carbon footprint. Unlike conferences, workshops, as a more extended teaching mode, usually involve a series of activities such as gathering, learning, and dining of participants from different regions, which generally cannot be ignored carbon emissions. The workshop's unique format brings particular carbon footprint characteristics. There is a lack of research on carbon reduction in workshop education mode. This paper compares the workshop's carbon footprint with different characteristics, taking the DigitalFUTURES International Workshop for Architecture Education at Tongji University in China as an example, including the workshop length, the mode of participation and transportation. We constructed a proposed model to obtain the minimum workshop carbon footprint. The results show that moving from in-person to online workshops can reduce the carbon footprint by up to 88%. When controlling the mode of transportation and number of workshop days, a 3-day 314.87 km train transportation workshop can achieve an equal carbon footprint online and in-person. However, keeping the share of the in-person model is recommended to ensure efficient learning and effective communication. Our work provides a sustainable solution for future workshop teaching.
... Convention centers consume an enormous amount of energy for lighting, multimedia devices, and air conditioning across a vast amount of space. Neugebauer et al. (2020) conducted a Life Cycle Assessment on a 3-day international academic conference and found that its carbon footprint was 455 tons of CO 2 eq., or 0.57 tons CO 2 eq. per participant. ...
... In perspective, a person living in Rwanda generates 0.67 tons CO 2 eq. emissions per year (Neugebauer et al. 2020). This study showed that some of the largest contributors included but were not limited to electricity consumption, thermal energy consumption, water usage, and waste generation (Neugebauer et al. 2020 transfer use, server use, and computer use, to name a few, but its impact is smaller than an in-person conference (Faber 2021). ...
... emissions per year (Neugebauer et al. 2020). This study showed that some of the largest contributors included but were not limited to electricity consumption, thermal energy consumption, water usage, and waste generation (Neugebauer et al. 2020 transfer use, server use, and computer use, to name a few, but its impact is smaller than an in-person conference (Faber 2021). When deciding how much of a conference can be made virtual, there are several challenges to consider. ...
International conferences such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) attract over 25,000 attendees from around the world and have an alarming carbon footprint. Carbon neutral events have increased in popularity, and help to curb large amounts of emissions and slow climate change. We discuss techniques to reduce carbon emissions without settling for offsets from an individual and conference scale. The UNFCCC COP can reduce its overall emissions significantly by implementing a hybrid conference model and more sustainable conference choices. COP can lead the way in establishing a sustainable model to advance the climate agenda without exacerbating the global climate crisis.
... As the event industry proliferates, it also leads to substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The carbon footprint per participant reaches up to 3000 kg CO 2 equivalent as reported by previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] , suggesting that the annual carbon footprint for the global event industry are of the same order of magnitude as the yearly GHG emissions of the entire United States (U.S.), responsible for more than 10% of global CO 2 emissions 14 . To meet the Paris Agreement target 15 , the event organizers adopt sustainability measures 16 , and promotion towards the less carbon-intensive virtual conferences has never been discontinued in the past decade 8,[17][18][19][20] . ...
... However, it considered a single conference hub for both in-person and hybrid conferences and thus neglected the geographical effects of hub selection and participant assignment. Several studies attempted to quantify the environmental impacts from virtual and in-person conferences 5,6 , but none of them assessed the environmental sustainability of hybrid conferences. Thus, a critical gap exists in improving the understanding of life cycle environmental impacts of in-person, virtual, and hybrid conferences. ...
... Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1 summarize and compare the state-of-the-art conference LCA studies. Previous LCA studies mainly focused on quantifying the carbon footprint of inperson conferences, while only two of them presented results for other impact categories using the LCIA method, including CML2001, USEtox, Eco-Indicator 99, and UBP 97 6,13 . Half of them focused exclusively on round-trip transportation 4,5,9,11,12,29 while the rest considered life cycle stages of preparation, execution, catering, accommodation, and transportation [6][7][8]13,26 . ...
Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has urged event holders to shift conferences online. Virtual and hybrid conferences are greener alternatives to in-person conferences, yet their environmental sustainability has not been fully assessed. Considering food, accommodation, preparation, execution, information and communication technology, and transportation, here we report comparative life cycle assessment results of in-person, virtual, and hybrid conferences and consider carbon footprint trade-offs between in-person participation and hybrid conferences. We find that transitioning from in-person to virtual conferencing can substantially reduce the carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90%. For the sake of maintaining more than 50% of in-person participation, carefully selected hubs for hybrid conferences have the potential to slash carbon footprint and energy use by two-thirds. Furthermore, switching the dietary type of future conferences to plant-based diets and improving energy efficiencies of the information and communication technology sector can further reduce the carbon footprint of virtual conferences.
... Their typical purpose is to reach a cooperative conclusion about a topic related to all participants' backgrounds through the intensive and horizontal exchange of knowledge and experiences [77]. Conferences and seminars are considered particularly relevant in academic contexts as they provide a space for international visibility and networking, as well as the opportunity to share learnings, staying up to date with the latest research, presenting and defending one's work or receiving useful feedback to drive further research [78][79][80]. Despite the fact that much has been written in terms of environmental sustainability in academic conversational spaces [79][80][81][82][83][84][85], the literature disregards its cultural and transformative dimensions. ...
... Conferences and seminars are considered particularly relevant in academic contexts as they provide a space for international visibility and networking, as well as the opportunity to share learnings, staying up to date with the latest research, presenting and defending one's work or receiving useful feedback to drive further research [78][79][80]. Despite the fact that much has been written in terms of environmental sustainability in academic conversational spaces [79][80][81][82][83][84][85], the literature disregards its cultural and transformative dimensions. Thus, this paper aims to analyse how seminars and conferences, as common mechanisms of interaction, participation and communication in academic contexts, could be dialogical spaces to enhance readiness for change in HEIs. ...
... Despite the fact that the literature disregards cultural and transformative dimensions of academic conversational spaces, a seminar programme was a priori considered as an appropriate instrument to initiate the transformation of the academic culture. This traditional space of interaction, participation and communication in HEIs [78][79][80][81] is defined by practices and values which are consistent with the pursued change, such as interdisciplinary dialogue, horizontality and search of collaborative solutions [77]. ...
The transformation for sustainability requires a paradigm shift towards systems thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, which entails, above all, a process of cultural change affecting individual mindsets, organizations and society as a whole. Sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs) has been a recurrent research field in the past decades. However, little attention has been paid to the processes of internal and cultural change and, in particular, to the first steps to prepare academic communities for change. Understanding “readiness for change” as a core organizational competency to overcome continuous environmental changes and considering the diluted hierarchy at HEIs, this article proposes the adoption of dialogical and developmental approaches in a single action case, the SDGs Seminars at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This methodology was used to diagnose organizational and individual readiness for change considering cognitive, affective and behavioural components, and to identify consequences in organizational structures and culture. Our findings reveal that reframing dialogical spaces in HEIs to experience a collaborative and sustainability culture can unlock change, breaking down organizational silos, reducing resistances and engaging academic communities in the cocreation of institutional strategies. Furthermore, the case suggests that acting at the group level has impacts both on the individual and institutional levels.
... Studies that quantify conference travel emission reduction options focus most often on optimization of a single conference location (Astudillo & AzariJafari, 2018;Desiere, 2016;Fois, Cuena-Lombraña, Fristoe, Fenu, & Bacchetta, 2016;Kuonen, 2015;Stroud & Feeley, 2015), followed by a shift to land transport (Desiere, 2016;Fois et al., 2016;Kuonen, 2015;Neugebauer, Bolz, Mankaa, & Traverso, 2020), multi-site conferencing (Coroama, Hilty, & Birtel, 2012;Hischier & Hilty, 2002;Orsi, 2012;Parncutt, Meyer-Kahlen, & Sattmann, 2019), and excluding long-distance flyers (Desiere, 2016) (an overview is provided in Table S2-1 in Supporting Information S2). Hischier and Hilty (2002) assessed a fully virtual conference, which is generally assumed to require a negligible amount of travel. ...
... Fois et al. (2016) suggest a reduction potential of up to 19% for a global conference but make the unusual assumption that attendees travel 2,000 km by train and then fly for the remainder of the journey. Analyses of regional conferences suggest reductions of 10% (Neugebauer et al., 2020), 13% (Desiere, 2016), and 33% for an all-European conference (Kuonen, 2015). ...
... In particular, the inclusion of emissions from the use of digital technology could slightly reduce the relative advantage of digitization. However, travel is by far the largest contributor to the life cycle emissions of conference attendance (Hischier & Hilty, 2002;Neugebauer et al., 2020) and a more extensive assessment of life cycle impacts is unlikely to reach a different conclusion regarding the comparative climate benefits of virtual conferencing. ...
Air travel, including academic conference travel, is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and must be limited to achieve climate change targets. To model reduction potentials, we analyzed travel emissions for three global conferences of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. Travel emissions were 722-955 t CO 2 e per conference and averaged 1.3-1.8 t CO 2 e per attendee. A shift to land transport for short flights has a maximum reduction potential of only 5% because long-haul flights contribute most of the emissions. A carbon tax of 100$/t CO 2 e could reduce emissions by 4-14% but students face the largest relative increase in the cost of conference attendance. Having the 10% of attendees who travel furthest attend virtually reduces conference travel emissions by 20-30%. A multi-site conference with two video-linked locations yields a reduction of 25-50%; a three-site conference yields a reduction of 46-75% and combined with a shift to land transport a reduction of up to 82%. A virtual conference would yield zero travel emissions. We conclude that the effectiveness of the reduction options mostly depends on how international the conference is and whether the longest flights are eliminated. We call on conference organizers, universities , academic societies, and funders to further develop, support, and implement multi-site and virtual conference models.
... The flow of participants caused a large part of the total carbon footprint of the artwork auction. In addition, the carbon dioxide emitted by the long-distance transportation of participants, whose proportion is low, accounts for the main part of the total traffic emissions of the artwork auction (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Allowing long-distance participants to switch from face-to-face participation to online video and even completely virtual artwork auctions can significantly reduce carbon emissions (Neugebauer et al., 2020;Ewijk and Hoekman, 2021;Jckle, 2021). ...
... In addition, the carbon dioxide emitted by the long-distance transportation of participants, whose proportion is low, accounts for the main part of the total traffic emissions of the artwork auction (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Allowing long-distance participants to switch from face-to-face participation to online video and even completely virtual artwork auctions can significantly reduce carbon emissions (Neugebauer et al., 2020;Ewijk and Hoekman, 2021;Jckle, 2021). ...
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have become the leading cause of climate problems. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from human economic activities and realizing carbon neutralization are the main means of sustainable economic development. Among them, carbon emission reduction of large-scale activities including auctions bears the brunt. Through the emission factor method, this paper estimates the carbon footprint of a typical artwork auction and divides the auction market into different sizes, according to the average round-trip distance of the number of participants. The results show that a typical 3-day medium-sized artwork auction with 500 people’s carbon footprint is about 270 tons of carbon dioxide. The traffic carbon emission of participants accounts for a large proportion of the total carbon footprint, particularly composed of the traffic carbon emissions of a small proportion of long-distance participants. Therefore, the transition from offline to virtual artwork auctions can significantly reduce the carbon footprint by 90%–95%. We put forward suggestions on improving the auction carbon footprint accounting process and industry carbon neutralization system, and promoting the development of relevant technologies for the virtual artwork auction market.
... For example, a comprehensive life cycle assessment of a three-day international conference revealed that travel activities contributed 83% of the event's 455-ton CO 2 footprint. 24 However, the results of this survey found that such concerns were the least important attribute. This was true even for those who were "very concerned" about environmental impacts. ...
... 27 At the same time, the unfavorable views of virtual conference formats complicates efforts to minimize emissions. Considering that travel is the largest emissions contributor, 24 options that accommodate both decreases in air travel and an in-person component include promoting alternative transportation methods like trains 28 and transitioning to hybrid formats as described previously. Such alternatives need to be assessed to determine whether conference attendees find them palatable. ...
Unlabelled:
The increase in virtual conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic provided unexpected advantages such as increased accessibility, while also creating concern about the effectiveness of online networking and career development. Given that a variety of conference attributes are impacted by changes in conference format, we sought to investigate how plastic surgeons prioritize key aspects of conference conduct.
Methods:
We sent a survey based on conjoint analysis, a statistical method for evaluating consumer preferences, to active members of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Respondents were asked to choose between pairs of conference options, each with unique attributes. Their answers were used to calculate feature importance values and utility coefficients for the conference attributes. Subgroup analyses were conducted based on demographic factors.
Results:
A total of 263 respondents completed the survey. Respondents were mostly White (181 individuals [68.8%]) and men (186 [70.7%]). Nearly half (122 [46.4%]) had been practicing 20 or more years. Conference attributes with the highest feature importance values (SDs) were cost of attendance (30.4% [14.2%]) and conference format (28.8% [14.2%]). Equity initiatives (14.5% [10.1%]), reimbursement for cost (11.1% [5.7%]), and opportunities for networking (9.5% [6.0%]) had intermediate feature importance values. Environmental impact had the lowest feature importance (5.7% [3.8%]).
Conclusions:
Surgeons' conference preferences depend highly on format and the presence of equity initiatives, both of which can be incorporated or modified in future conferences to ensure inclusive and successful events. Meanwhile, environmental impact is less important to surgeons, suggesting a pressing need to bring sustainability issues to their attention.
... Prior studies have documented multiple benefits of virtual conference formats. First, virtual convenings have a significantly lower carbon footprint than in-person events, due to the elimination of travel, lodging and consumable items [22][23][24][25]. Greenhouse gas emissions for a typical in-person conference goer range from 0.5 to 2 tons of carbon dioxide per attendee [7]. ...
... Our results echoed prior studies about the benefits of online convenings, including increased accessibility leading to more diverse participation, and a lower carbon footprint [6,7,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]31,50]. All outcomes, which included enjoyment and satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, action orientation, and expanded social networks, produced an average response above the midpoint on five-point scales. ...
Joint professional and stakeholder meetings to share local, regional and national responses to the current and projected effects of climate change have become regular, recurring events over the past decade. These “climate adaptation convenings” generally include presentations, discussions, and social learning about how to effectively respond to climate-related impacts. Many of these convenings shifted to virtual formats during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a study to understand how four virtual convenings in the United States compare with otherwise similar in-person events. Through surveys with attendees of four virtual climate adaptation convenings, we explored how attendees’ outcomes differed between conference formats and captured their perceptions of virtual vs. in-person events. Overall, 71% of attendees indicated that they were more likely or equally likely to attend future convenings online, and 62% reported that knowledge gain was about the same or better online than in-person. Many respondents appreciated the accessibility and more inclusive participation at virtual convenings, as well as the environmental benefits and reduced costs. However, interpersonal interactions were inferior in virtual formats, and some attendees experienced difficulties with technology and screen fatigue. Respondents shared suggestions for addressing these challenges. Altogether, findings suggest that virtual convenings have high potential if greater attention is paid to these elements.
... The potential per capita emission from the physical mode of our conference was 0.37 MT CO 2 Eq, which is lower than the one reported for an academic conference in Europe (0.57 MT CO 2 Eq) (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Transportation of the delegates to attend the conference was the single most contributor toward the CE in our study, similar to the findings from existing literature (Kitamura et al., 2020;Neugebauer et al., 2020;Roberts & Godlee, 2007). ...
... MT CO 2 Eq) (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Transportation of the delegates to attend the conference was the single most contributor toward the CE in our study, similar to the findings from existing literature (Kitamura et al., 2020;Neugebauer et al., 2020;Roberts & Godlee, 2007). The potential travelrelated per capita emission was found to be 0.27 MT CO 2 Eq in our study, which is almost half that of reported from the 14th Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (0.5 MT CO 2 Eq), annual meetings of the Societies for Pediatric Urology (0.6 MT CO 2 Eq) and ASAB (0.6 MT CO 2 Eq) (Desiere, 2016;Milford et al., 2020;Raby & Madden, 2021). ...
Virtual conferences are environment-friendly alternatives to physical conferences. COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of virtual conferences. However, they are not without their share of impact on the environment. We assessed the carbon emissions (CE) of a three day national public health conference with 1474 attendees held in virtual mode and the potential CE saved compared to the physical mode. The CE of the virtual conference were estimated to be 6.44 Metric Tonne (MT) carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) Equivalent (Eq). Potential CE that would have resulted from the physical mode of the conference were 355.85 MT CO 2 Eq which is 55 times higher than the virtual mode. The live video streaming of the proceedings was the highest contributor to the virtual conference’s overall CE (81.5%). A digitally sober conference would have emitted 1.27 MT CO 2 Eq, translating to a CE reduction of 80.3% from the estimated virtual conference emission. Academic conferences should strive to become carbon neutral by adopting the virtual mode of conferencing, and within that, digital sobriety should be the policy of action. Policies to motivate the adoption of virtual conferencing and digital sobriety need to be undertaken at the organizational and individual levels.
... This is certainly also true for the meeting industry (cf. Hischier and Hilty 2002;Neugebauer et al. 2020). The arrival and departure of participants for just one convention produces a large amount of CO2 as well as total emissions within the global meeting industry (cf. ...
... Civardi w. D.; Neugebauer et al. 2020). Publications indicate that the share of CO2-equivalent caused by travel, especially international or intercontinental air travel, for (international) meetings, for example, can be as high as 95%, depending on the share of air passengers (cf. ...
In Skyros Island, three public sectors have established an eco-community, which hosts students and volunteers from Greece and other countries, in order to promote a new eco-lifestyle, known as “SKYROS Ecovillage” model. Through its actions,it aims to spread the message of environmental awareness in order toeducate and transform the upcoming generations into environmentally responsible decision makers. Since 2015, a network of supporters has been established and they strongly believe that humans and nature can live in harmony.It is indispensable, to update the cultural software of our society and to cultivate an attitude of responsibility, consciousness and active environmental participation.This paper provides an analysis of a paradigmatic approach of an environmentally successful innovative community, stationed at a Greek port.
... Since air travel is the main factor for the environmental impact of conferences (9), it is important to choose a venue that can also be reached by other means of transport and to communicate and promote these alternative travel options. Additionally, carbon offsetting of inevitable travel-related greenhouse gas emissions could be recommended to attendees or even budgeted into conference fees by the organisers. ...
... If the water quality allows it, tap water should replace bottled water. Food should be predominantly plant-based, as meat, dairy, and fish contribute more heavily to greenhouse gas emissions (9,10). Catering also relates to another area, waste management. ...
Climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic challenge us to re-evaluate the way we live and work. In the academic sector, this includes organising and attending conferences and other scientific meetings. The pandemic has led EAHIL 2020 to be moved online, which is “greener” than physical meetings, but has interactional drawbacks. On the other hand, planning of physical conferences can make use of existing guidance to improve the environmental impact in areas such as venue and travel arrangements, catering, waste reduction as well as communication. In the future, conference organisers can draw upon insights into remote and virtual collaboration gained during the pandemic. Hybrid conferences that allow physical and remote attendance might become an option for increased sustainability of scientific meetings.
... However, as citizens, we have a moral responsibility to flatten the curve of a pandemic through reduced in-person interactions, smaller conventions only for critical needs, and much less travel to mitigate spread and reduce risks for everyone (Khoo & Lantos, 2020;Verma et al., 2020). More broadly, we can reconsider the carbon costs and other impacts including accessibility and the equity of costs to convene exclusively through faceto-face meetings (Julsrud et al., 2014;Neugebauer et al., 2020). In doing so, we have an opportunity to promote equity, diversity, and inclusivity through different planning, by reducing some of the financial costs, and by sharing our insights to wider, more varied communities (Ediger et al., 2010;Montgomery et al., 2012). ...
... After all, we are scientists, and all large meetings come with benefits but also challenges. Navigating a large convention (although an app helps), rushing between talks, choosing between concurrent sessions, relatively high carbon footprint for many attendees (Neugebauer et al., 2020), other costs of attendance including fatigue (Julsrud et al., 2014), and now a further moral imperative suggest that we must consider alternatives. The meeting theme of the British Ecological Society, "Ecology Across Borders" and many other contemporary conferences are also ideally suited to design thinking and experimentation (Burdick & Willis, 2011). ...
Conferences provide an invaluable set of opportunities for professional development. Online, virtual, and distributed conferences do not necessarily mean less opportunity for growth and innovation in science but varied and novel options for communicating the scientific process. Open science and many existing tools are in place in the practice of contemporary ecology and evolution to provide latitude for a much broader scope of sharing and thus learning from conferences. A brief overview of the science supporting online conferences and a highlight of some of the open science concepts in ecology and evolution are provided here to enable better learning through better planning for online conferences. Online conferences are a necessity. We can use this an opportunity in ecology and evolution to enable better learning and affect social good.
... Another reason for employing a hybrid format was a focus on the conference's environmental impact. The carbon footprint of conferences uniting researchers across the globe is colossal (Klöwer, Hopkins, Allen, & Higham, 2020;Neugebauer, Bolz, Mankaa, & Traverso, 2020), and there is an increasing demand to make conferences more sustainable. The commitment of SysMus22's organizers was obvious in their communication; participants were expressly discouraged from flying to the conference unless absolutely necessary, a list of accommodation with a transparent estimated carbon footprint was published, and vegan options were available at every meal, with some meals being completely vegan. ...
The International Conferences of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus) are a series of interdisciplinary student-run conferences with the aim of promoting intellectual exchange between early-career researchers in various fields of systematic musicology. In 2022, the 15th conference was hosted by the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent, Belgium, and was held in a hybrid format, allowing researchers to be present and participate in the events in person and online. SysMus22 comprised 43 posters, 23 presentations, 6 workshops, a panel discussion, musical demonstrations, and 3 musical performances. Topics were as diverse as music cognition, psychology, health and well-being, music theory and performance, technology, and philosophy, among others. Adding to the richness and diversity of topics were keynote lectures given by Psyche Loui (MIND Laboratory, Northeastern University), Mendel Kaelen (Wavepaths), and Rebecca Schaefer (Music, Brain, Health & Technology Laboratory, Leiden University). The whole conference was marked by a friendly, warm, and stimulating atmosphere, encouraging the exchange of ideas between all participants and particularly among researchers at the beginning of their academic careers in systematic musicology. This report provides an overview of SysMus22, the topics it covered, and the format it employed, with a critical discussion of the benefits and challenges posed by the hybrid format.
... You may have read our rst European Health Psychologist (EHP) paper on "How to make EHPS conferences more climate-friendly" (Warner et al., 2022). Herein, we discussed that the largest impact of conferences on planetary health is, by far, emissions produced by traveling to in-person conferences (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Ideas for other conference formats (e.g. ...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now clearly states that the existing adverse impacts of human-induced climate change on the natural world are "beyond natural climate variability" (2022). The report states that it is more likely than not that the 1.5°C global warming threshold will be reached before 2040 even in a very low greenhouse gas scenario, and that adaptation to many climate risks will likely become constrained and have reduced effectiveness once this happens. As scientists working in the health eld, we know about the connection between global environmental change and human health (Inauen et al., 2021). There is more and more data emerging on how changes to our environment affect our health (see here https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/home). Health Psychologists across the planet have been developing interventions to support health behaviour change and know about the health co-benets of some mitigation and adaptation behaviours (e.g. reducing meat consumption). Knowledge amassed on human behaviour change for health can be used to support bottom-up (Chevance et al., 2021) and top-down initiatives (Sniehotta et al., 2017) that target mitigation and adaptation efforts.As a response to the overwhelming evidence highlighting human activity as a key accelerating factor in global warming the Special Interest Group “Equity, Global Health, and Sustainability” within the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS) set out to assess what we, as a society, can do to reduce the environmental impact of our annual meetings. You may have read our rst European Health Psychologist (EHP) paper on “How to make EHPS conferences more climate-friendly” (Warner et al., 2022). Herein, we discussed that the largest impact of conferences on planetary health is, by far, emissions produced by traveling to in-person conferences (Neugebauer et al., 2020). Ideas for other conference formats (e.g. hybrid, online-only, bi-annual face-to-face or online; face-to-face in each member country and linking internationally online, etc.) have already been put forward, and the executive committee of the EHPS engages in ongoing discussions with EHPS members.
... The potential CE of transport involved in attending the CMEs and returning has been estimated to be the single most important factor in the overall potential of CE. This is in line with previous literature, which also found transport to be the predominant factor (21,27,28). Travel-related emissions incurred to present a paper at conferences were pegged at 0.8 MT CO 2 Eq, worldwide (29). ...
Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, physical meetings and continuing medical education (CMEs) are being conducted in virtual mode. Digital sobriety has been advocated as a strategy for controlling the environmental emission from online events. The present study was undertaken to assess the impact of virtual CMEs on the environment and the participants' perception, knowledge, attitude, and practices of digital sobriety during the CMEs.
Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional Google form-based online study was conducted among the 1,311 registrants of 23 virtual CMEs hosted in India. A pre-tested English questionnaire was used to collect the data. The potential carbon footprint of the significant physical CME activities and the carbon emission (CE) of the virtual CMEs were estimated. Among the registrants contacted, 251 consented and participated in the study.
Results: The CE of the virtual CMEs was 0.787 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MT CO2 Eq). If the CMEs were conducted physically, the potential CE was estimated to be 290.094 MT CO2 Eq. The awareness rate of digital sobriety was 35%. Most of the participants (58.7%) from the current study preferred the hybrid mode of CMEs.
Conclusions: Virtual, digitally sober CMEs have reduced the potential CE by 99.7% compared to physical CMEs in India. The awareness and knowledge about digital sobriety is low in India. Knowledge, networking, social interactions, and overall satisfaction were relatively lower in the virtual mode of CMEs than in the physical mode.
... At the same time, there are rising concerns about the environmental externalities generated by long-distance travel, and air travel in particular (Chiambaretto et al. 2021). Recent studies have quantified the carbon footprint associated with a (sustainability science) scientific conference (Neugebauer et al. 2020), conducted a qualitative research of (sustainability) scientists' dissonance between pro-environmental attitudes and flying behaviour (Schrems and Upham 2020), and discussed alternatives for conference travel emissions (Klöwer et al. 2020). ...
Findings Academics are often environmentally-minded, and they often travel internationally to share their research. Are they prone to attitude-behaviour gap? We collected data from 104 academics in Europe regarding attitudes towards online conferences, flight shame and carbon offsetting, and analysed their trip-making and mode choices in hypothetical conference travel situations. We find that while respondents and their social environments are conscious of the environmental impacts of flying, travel time considerations dominate their travel choices. Respondents are willing to buy a € 5 more expensive ticket or extend their travel by train by 30 seconds to reduce 1 kg of CO 2 .
... As early as the late 1980s, some hotels in Europe realized the role of hotels in environmental protection, gradually carried out environmental management, established their environmental standards, and achieved remarkable results [25,26]. In Britain in 2009, there was a study on measuring the carbon emissions generated when individuals or groups directly or indirectly consume certain products or services by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) [27]. ...
At present, COVID-19 is seriously affecting the economic development of the hotel industry, and at the same time, the world is vigorously calling for “carbon emission mitigation”. Under these two factors, tourist hotels are in urgent need of effective tools to balance economic and social contributions with ecological and environmental impacts. Therefore, this paper takes Chinese tourist hotels as the research object and constructs a research framework for Chinese tourist hotels by constructing a Super-SBM Non-Oriented model. We measured the economic efficiency and eco-efficiency of Chinese tourist hotels from 2000 to 2019; explored spatial-temporal evolution patterns of their income, carbon emissions, eco-efficiency, and economic efficiency through spatial hotspot analysis and center of gravity analysis; and identified the spatial agglomeration characteristics of such hotels through the econometric panel Tobit model to identify the different driving factors inside and outside the tourist hotel system. The following results were obtained: (1) the eco-efficiency of China’s tourist hotels is higher than the economic efficiency, which is in line with the overall Kuznets curve theory, but the income and carbon emissions have not yet been decoupled; (2) most of China’s tourist hotels are crudely developed with much room for improving the economic efficiency, and most of the provincial and regional tourist hotels are at a low-income level, but the carbon emissions are still on the increase; and (3) income, labor, carbon emissions, waste emissions, and water consumption are the internal drivers of China’s tourist hotels, while industrial structure, urbanization rate, energy efficiency, and information technology are the external drivers of China’s tourist hotels. The research results provide a clear path for the reduction in carbon emissions and the improvement of the eco-efficiency of Chinese tourist hotels. Under the backdrop of global climate change and the post-COVID-19 era, the research framework and conclusions provide references for countries with new economies similar to China and countries that need to quickly restore the hotel industry.
... The scientific discourse has included measuring and quantifying the emissions costs of conferences and the travel associated with them, from specific events (Astudillo and AzariJafari, 2018), to conference series (Neugebauer et al., 2020), or indeed looking at the total emissions of an entire discipline (Waring et al., 2014;Poom et al., 2017). ...
The environmental costs of research are progressively important to the NLP community and their associated challenges are increasingly debated. In this work, we analyse the carbon cost (measured as CO2-equivalent) associated with journeys made by researchers attending in-person NLP conferences. We obtain the necessary data by text-mining all publications from the ACL anthology available at the time of the study (n=60,572) and extracting information about an author’s affiliation, including their address. This allows us to estimate the corresponding carbon cost and compare it to previously known values for training large models. Further, we look at the benefits of in-person conferences by demonstrating that they can increase participation diversity by encouraging attendance from the region surrounding the host country. We show how the trade-off between carbon cost and diversity of an event depends on its location and type. Our aim is to foster further discussion on the best way to address the joint issue of emissions and diversity in the future.
... While these emissions only constitute a negligibly small part of the global carbon budget, they can constitute a significant part of the personal and institutional carbon footprint for academics (Spinellis & Louridas 2013). Further, although conference travel is undoubtedly the largest source of emissions, printed programmes, various types of merchandise, hotel nights and the running of the venue also come with associated environmental impacts (Neugebauer et al. 2020). This is problematic, as the ecological footprint associated with attending conferences may to some extent undermine the message of the importance of reduced environmental impact that ecologists and conservation scientists try to convey to the general public (Gr emillet 2008, Fox et al. 2009). ...
Academic conferences play an important role in the scientific community by providing an opportunity for researchers to discuss their work and to network. However, drawbacks of traditional face‐to‐face (F2F) conferences, such as the ostensible exclusion of non‐scientists, the substantial environmental footprint, and the large costs in terms of both time and money are increasingly being recognized. As a result, alternative and complementary formats are being explored. One of these is the Twitter conference (TC), in which research is presented and discussed on the social media platform Twitter. Here, we use hashtag and presenter data from several ornithology and ecology conferences (both TCs and F2F events) to explore the potential reach of the tweets and the magnitude of the difference in greenhouse gas emissions between the two conference types. We found that TCs generated greater engagement than F2F events, have the potential to reach a very large audience and result in a substantial reduction in emissions. Further, we argue that the format promotes presenter and audience diversity due to participation being flexible and virtually cost‐free. While we recognize some disadvantages of this format compared to F2F events, especially in relation to the social and networking aspects of conferences, we envision that virtual events, such as TCs, will play an important role in the future of science dissemination and outreach. By embracing such opportunities, academic conferences can move towards a more inclusive and sustainable future.
... A virtual conference eliminates the environmental impacts of travel and large venues, although emissions associated with IT infrastructures are not negligible (Houston and Reay, 2011). While calculating the exact emissions saved is beyond the scope of this commentary, other cases have shown that the environmental advantage of virtual events is significant (Kl€ ower et al., 2020;Neugebauer et al., 2020). ...
In this comment, we share our experiences from organizing the ICTA2020 Virtual Conference on Low-Carbon Lifestyles and argue that virtual events have potential to become the new norm among academics. We present an overview of tools that can be used and support our arguments with results from a feedback survey that was filled out by the participants of our conference. Main challenges for virtual conferences are the facilitation of informal spaces for social interaction and the prevention of ‘screen fatigue’. Advantages are that they can increase societal outreach, improve the academic quality of discussions, create new opportunities for networking, and provide an inclusive environment.
... Wprawdzie nie można podważać jej zasadności, a tym bardziej nie dostrzegać jej kulturowego źródła, ale pojawia się problem śladu węglowego pracowników sektora kultury. W przypadku naukowców, którzy także często wyjeżdżają na kwerendy, staże oraz konferencje w ramach projektów badawczych, pojawiły się publikacje omawiające wpływ ich aktywności na środowisko (Neugebauer et al. 2020), a sam problem już teraz uwzględniony jest przy organizacji wydarzeń naukowych 12 . Nie ulega wątpliwości, że każdego rodzaju działalność ma wpływ na otoczenie, ale poznanie jego zakresu mogłoby mieć dużą wartość informacyjną dla osób odpowiedzialnych za kształtowanie kierunków rozwoju kultury. ...
... Wprawdzie nie można podważać jej zasadności, a tym bardziej nie dostrzegać jej kulturowego źródła, ale pojawia się problem śladu węglowego pracowników sektora kultury. W przypadku naukowców, którzy także często wyjeżdżają na kwerendy, staże oraz konferencje w ramach projektów badawczych, pojawiły się publikacje omawiające wpływ ich aktywności na środowisko (Neugebauer et al. 2020), a sam problem już teraz uwzględniony jest przy organizacji wydarzeń naukowych 12 . Nie ulega wątpliwości, że każdego rodzaju działalność ma wpływ na otoczenie, ale poznanie jego zakresu mogłoby mieć dużą wartość informacyjną dla osób odpowiedzialnych za kształtowanie kierunków rozwoju kultury. ...
Polityka kulturalna jest „instrumentem prowadzącym do rozwoju przemysłów kulturalnych
i zapewnienia rozwoju poszczególnych kultur w świecie”, jak definiuje to pojęcie UNESCO.
Obejmuje rozwiązania systemowe w sektorze kultury, co jest o tyle istotne, że pozwala istnieć
tym jej przejawom, które nie są w stanie samoistnie funkcjonować w warunkach wolnego
rynku i postępującej globalizacji (Polityka kulturalna UNESCO, b.r.) polityka kulturalna z jednej
strony pozwala właściwie chronić i wspomagać, z drugiej – dyktuje kierunki rozwoju i określa
perspektywy dalszych działań.
Należy przy tym mieć również na uwadze, że polityka kulturalna ma integrować, wspierać
i budować, ale źle sformułowana lub wykorzystana ideologicznie tworzy mechanizmy wykluczające, niszczące i generujące konflikty (zob. Mangset 2018, s. 1). Rozwijająca się świadomość
różnorodności kulturowej i dostrzeganie jej wartości dodatkowo wpływa na konieczność
tworzenia spójnych i inkluzyjnych ram działania (por. O’Regan 2002, s. 15).
Celem niniejszego rozdziału jest charakterystyka wybranych współczesnych wyzwań dla
polityk kulturalnych na podstawie odpowiednich dokumentów, wraz z przedstawieniem
konkretnych, już wdrożonych rozwiązań. Analiza została przedstawiona za pomocą przykładów z różnych szczebli zarządzania: począwszy od skali globalnej (UNESCO), ponadnarodowej (Unia Europejska), narodowej (Niemcy), na regionalnej (Bawaria) i miejskiej kończąc
(Mannheim). Ostatnie dwa przykłady – land Bawarii i miasto Mannheim – opisano szerzej,
by pokazać kompleksowość działań.
Greenhouse gas emissions reduction is a critical topic in the scientific community, as researchers strive to produce knowledge for the betterment of society. However, it is important to acknowledge that researchers themselves engage in activities that have a significant environmental impact. Group meetings and conferences are under the spot due to their extensive contribution to emissions through travel, catering, hosting, and other event-related activities. To address this issue, our work aims to conduct an environmental diagnosis of an ongoing H2020 European project, focusing on the impacts associated with the periodical group meetings organized in each country involved. We also sought to evaluate researchers’ stance on online meetings and collected environmental and personal opinions through dedicated online forms. Results show that while travel is the primary contributor to emissions, catering, meeting structures, and hosting support should not be overlooked. Conference location and availability of public transportation also play a crucial role in the final impact of the event, as they affect directly the 87% share of emissions due to travels. Besides, using local distributors and reducing hotel stays (representing about 5% of the final impact) may reduce the potential environmental burden of these events. On the other side, besides the obtained positive feedback from online meetings, in-person activities are still more effective for reinforcing human bonds and collaborations.
Online conferences are widely thought to reduce many of the costs of convening academic communities. From lower carbon emissions, lower fees, less difficulty in attending (particularly for marginalised researchers), and greater accessibility, virtual events promise to address many of the issues that in‐person events take for granted. In this article, we draw on a community economies framing from geographers J.K. Gibson‐Graham to argue for centring the work of convening within efforts to explore reparative possibilities within the academy. Reflecting on the changing costs arising from moving an originally in‐person conference series online, we argue for embracing the opportunities offered. We explore how organising teams might enact alternative values through allocating the material, financial and labour resources traditionally spent for these events differently. We look particularly at how our carbon and financial costs changed, and how, by retaining a fee, we were able to allocate our budgets in ways which redistributed the surplus to participants in need (rather than bolster conference centre profits). We then explore what these changing costs meant in terms of our attendance levels across career stages and geographical locations. Looking at whether our experiment resulted in increased support for online events, we examine the continued ambivalence felt for the virtual. Finally, while we largely explore the benefits of online options, our last section urges caution over assumptions that this move will result in a more sustainable academia, particularly given the intensifications surrounding high quality streaming video, and suggest that we treat current trends as ongoing experiments, rather than solutions.
Problem definition: We examine the environmental implications of shifting from in-person to virtual conference formats and identify the effects of such a shift on the value conferences provide to our societies. We extend work from other fields to present a more comprehensive comparison of the environmental impact and perceived value of different conference formats for the operations management/research communities. Methodology/results: We leverage a series of COVID-19–induced natural experiments to precisely evaluate the environmental footprint and societal value difference between in-person and virtual formats via life cycle assessment and survey techniques, respectively. Specifically, we focus on Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Production and Operations Management Society, and European Operations Management Association conferences that were conducted in both formats between 2019 and 2021. The environmental assessment reveals a huge impact reduction: for climate change, on average, from 941.9 kg CO 2eq per person for in-person formats to 1.0 for virtual. The value assessment emphasizes, instead, a detrimental utility loss with the overall perceived value derived from attendance moving—on a scale from 0 to 10—on average, from 7.9 to 4.0. When investigating the drivers of conference valuation, virtual formats show some merits, such as lower perceived costs and the added value of flexibility. The preference for in-person formats is unambiguous though, justified by the large performance gap related to socialization and networking, the two most important value drivers identified by our analysis. Managerial implications: These results highlight an inherent trade-off between virtual and in-person conferences. To overcome it, we discuss four strategies as to how our societies can reduce their environmental footprints and remain true to their essential purpose: (1) reduce in-person impact, (2) improve virtual design, (3) hybrid and decentralized formats, and (4) revise conferencing model and societies’ role.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0591 .
The annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting yields significant, measurable impacts that conflict with the environmental commitment of the Society and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations to address the climate emergency (IPCC, 2018). We used 12,761 presenters’ origins, two online carbon calculators, and benchmark values to estimate 2018 meeting-related travel, event venue operations, and hotel accommodation emissions. Presenters’ conference travel resulted in between 17,298 and 8690 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide (t CO 2 ), with or without radiative forcing index factors. Over 92% of authors traveled by air and were responsible for >99% of total travel-related emissions. Extrapolations based on 28,691 registrants yielded between 69,592.60 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (t CO 2 e) and 38,010.85 t CO 2 from travel. Comparatively, authors’ and registrants’ hotel accommodation emissions equaled 429 and 965 t CO 2 e, whereas operation of the San Diego Convention Center equaled ∼107 t CO 2 e. We relate SfN meeting-related emissions to potential September Arctic Sea ice loss, labor productivity loss in lower-income equatorial countries, and future temperature-related deaths. We estimate emissions reductions of between 23% and 78% by incentivizing between 10% and 50% of the most distant registrants to attend virtually or connecting between two and seven in-person hubs virtually. Completely virtual meetings may yield a reduction of >99% relative to centralized in-person meetings and increase participation of women, queer and transgender scientists, and scientists from low- and middle-income countries. We strongly recommend adopting alternative meeting modes such as four or more in-person global hubs connected virtually by 2030 and fully virtual by 2050.
Etkinlik sektörüne akademik ilgi giderek artmakta olup sadece sayısal olarak büyüme ile birlikte sektör daha global, sofistike ve kritik hale gelmektedir (Mair ve Smith, 2021). Bu çalışmanın amacı son dönemde turizm sektöründe sürdürülebilirlik kavramının giderek önem kazanması sonucunda etkinlik şirketlerinin yeşil etkinlikler konusunu nasıl ele aldıklarını değerlendirmektir. Bunun için de Türkiye’de faaliyet gösteren etkinlik sektörü alanındaki tüm derneklerin üyelerine bir araştırma yapılmıştır. Bu araştırmada yeşil etkinlikleri motive edici ve engelleyici faktörler, şirketlerin bu alanda sertifika sahibi olup olmadıkları ve yeşil etkinlikler uygulamaya istekleri anket tekniği kullanılarak sorgulanmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarında sosyal sorumluluk sahibi olmak, olumlu imaj ve itibar yaratmak en önemli motivasyon unsurları olurken, yeşil etkinlikleri engelleyici faktörlerin başında ise bilgi eksikliği ve farkındalık eksikliği geldiği görülmektedir. Ayrıca etkinlik şirketinin çoğunun bu alanda herhangi bir sertifikaya sahip olmadıkları da tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma Türkiye’de yeşil etkinlikler konusunda yapılan öncü çalışmalardan biri olması ve anketi cevaplayanların çoğunun deneyimli sektör profesyonelleri olması araştırmayı pilot çalışma yapabilir ve sektör profesyonellerine ışık tutabilir.
Internet access has reached ca. 60% of the global population, with an average individual spending > 40% of the waking life on the Internet. We assess the environmental impacts of digital content consumption against the Earth’s ecological budget, finding that web surfing, social media, video and music streaming, and video conferencing could consume on average ∼40% of the per capita carbon budget consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as well as 55% of the per capita carrying capacity for mineral and metal resources depletion and > 10% for other five impact categories. Electricity decarbonisation would mitigate the climate impacts of Internet consumption substantially, but other impacts due primarily to the mining activities linked to electronic devices would remain of concern. A synergistic combination of rapid decarbonisation, electronic devices’ energy efficiency improvement, lifetime extension, and recycling, and behavioural change is paramount to prevent the increasing Internet demand from hindering sustainable lifestyles.
With the COVID-19 crisis, a long continuous rise in the event industry has come to an abrupt end, both in terms of the number of event formats held and the number of participants. When event and meeting formats become largely virtual or hybrid – as now disruptively forced by the COVID-19 pandemic – new opportunities arise to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal for climate action (SDG 13) and ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG 12) by reducing at least some of the business travel CO2 emissions. Various innovations, such as regionalized hubs, as a variant of hybrid event formats, with a mix of digital and face-to-face meetings, offer options for the business models of a heterogeneous event industry. Based on digital tools, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, as well as AI-based matchmaking tools, improved solutions for interaction and immersion are developing, which could then have an effect on terms of experience orientation and a reduction in visitor numbers. Such digital tools to be understood in the sense of a hybrid technology can then be a relevant factor in a future event industry which do not compromise the ecological and social and economic dimensions of sustainability.
Die von den Vereinten Nationen verabschiedete „Agenda 2030 für nachhaltige Entwicklung“ verdeutlicht, dass sich Nachhaltigkeit als ein weltweit relevantes, alle gesellschaftlichen Bereiche betreffendes Ziel menschlichen Handelns etabliert hat. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht der vorliegende Text am Beispiel von Konferenzen, ob und in welchem Umfang die Digitalisierung einen Beitrag zu ökologisch, sozial und öknomisch nachhaltigeren Wertschöpfungsprozessen der Veranstaltungswirtschaft leisten kann.
At the turn of the millennium, scientific publications began to wonder about the greenhouse gases emitted by research activities, through the category of “carbon footprint”. Since the end of the 2010s, this quantification has intensified and diversified. However, several distinct layers of temporalities must be identified in order to unfold the singularity of the term carbon footprint. The first refers to the terminological filiation between the “ecological footprint” and the carbon footprint. The second situates the process of carbon quantification between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, which is itself part of the long history of quantification. The third layer is the use of this category in many scientific publications: the carbon footprint of research is part of a larger body of work. A space of scientific commensurability then emerges in the form of the carbon dioxide equivalent: activities, or segments of activities, are made comparable by this common metric. The fieldwork conducted as part of a political science dissertation allows us to hear the diverse motivations of research staff in France who are undertaking this carbon footprint estimation. If this process of quantification questions scientific practices or perceptions, what is quantified is not only a "cost" of research but also the different forms of time on scientific activity.
Purpose
This study aimed to assess whether sociodemographic variables explain significant differences in attitudes towards transforming academic conferences into more sustainable events.
Design/methodology/approach
An analytical model of participants' attitudes towards sustainable conferences based on literature review as well as the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour was developed and applied to a sample of 532 surveyed individuals from 68 countries who regularly attended academic conferences in the last five years prior to 2020. The results were refined using statistical and computational techniques to achieve more empirically robust conclusions.
Findings
Results reveal that sociodemographic variables such as attendees' gender and age explain differences in attitudes. Women and older adults have stronger pro-environmental attitudes regarding event sustainability. On the other hand, attitudes towards more sustainable academic conferences are quite strong and positive overall. More sustainable events' venues, catering, conference materials and accommodations strongly influence attendees' attitudes towards more sustainable conferences. The strength of attitudes was weaker towards transportation.
Research limitations/implications
First, the analyses focused on only aspects related to the attendees' attitudes. Assessing their real behaviour would complete this research. The geographical areas defined by the U.N. and used in this study have the limitation of combining highly developed countries and developing countries in the same geographical area, for example, the Americas and Asia and the Pacific.
Practical implications
Specific socio-demographic variables' effects on attitudes towards sustainable academic conferences can indicate how organisers can best promote these events according to attendees' characteristics and develop differentiated marketing campaigns. For women and older adults, event sustainability should be emphasised as a competitive strategy to promote events and attract these audiences. Marketing strategies for younger attendees (under 30 years old) could focus on technology, networking or attractive social programmes. Sustainable venues, catering, conference materials and accommodations are easier to promote. Event organisers should encourage participants to make more environmentally friendly decisions regarding more sustainable event transport.
Social implications
A strategy based on promoting the event as contributing to sustainable development could educate attendees and put them on the path to developing stronger positive attitudes regarding sustainability and more sustainable behaviours. Sustainable academic conferences can educate students, organisers, service providers and delegates through their involvement in sustainable practices.
Originality/value
To our best knowledge, this research is the first to assess whether sociodemographic variables explain significant differences in attitudes towards the sustainable transformation of academic conferences.
In the public debate, the issues of ecological sustainability have gained more and more attention in recent years. This creates an increasing pressure on manufacturing companies, since they are responsible for the majority of resource consumption and waste emission. However, the topic of ecological sustainability is complex. Many companies and researchers are still dealing with the question on how to quantify it. To answer this question the paper performs a literature review of the most common sustainability indicators, which are mentioned in manufacturing and business relevant publications. Further it analyzes the identified indicators regarding their frequency and usage.
We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the “international job market for economists”. Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, government, or companies participate in this job market. The market follows a standardized process, where candidates are pre-screened in a short interview which takes place at an annual meeting in Europe or in the United States. Most interviews are arranged via a non-profit online platform, econjobmarket.org, which kindly agreed to share its anonymized data with us. Using this dataset, we estimate the individual environmental impact of 1057 candidates and one hundred recruitment committees who attended the EEA and AEA meetings in December 2019 and January 2020. We calculate that this pre-screening system generated the equivalent of about 4800 tons of avoidable CO2-eq and a comprehensive economic cost over €4.4 million. We contrast this overall assessment against three counterfactual scenarios: an alternative in-person system, a hybrid system (where videoconference is used for some candidates) and a fully online system (as it happened in 2020–21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Overall, the study can offer useful information to shape future recruitment standards in a more sustainable way.
Environmental degradation is the most serious challenge of the twenty-first century. To date, academic historians, among many others, have failed to fully confront the climate and biodiversity crises, often engaging in disavowal of the problems and our contribution to them in the course of our historical work. This article discusses mitigation efforts underway among other professional bodies, higher education institutions and academic disciplines, before addressing how we might embrace sustainability more meaningfully through our practices. We explain why a focus on decarbonisation is important, canvas the multiple benefits of reducing travel and consider what individuals and institutions can do to better respond to a crisis that is already with us. Our particular case study is Australia, though the implications of our findings – such as the effects of global heating and environmental destruction – are global.
There is a rising demand for assessing the performance of organisations on ethical, social and environmental (ESE) topics. Ethical, social and environmental accounting (ESEA) is common practice in many types of organisations and initiatives. Currently, scientific conferences are not in the spotlight nor feeling pressure to disclose their ESE accounts. However, proactively adopting these practices is an opportunity to lead the way and show commitment and responsibility. Since no existing ESEA method fits the domain of conferences well, this paper presents preliminary results on engineering such a method. We discuss material ESE topics for conferences, key performance indicators, measurement and data collection methods, and ICT infrastructure. We illustrate the method concepts by applying it to the RCIS conference series. We are confident that conference organisers and scientific communities will start assessing the performance of their conferences under many organisational sustainability dimensions and, what is more important, initiate reflection processes to improve such performance over the years.
Batch processing reduces processing time in a business process at the expense of increasing waiting time. If this trade-off between processing and waiting time is not analyzed, batch processing can, over time, evolve into a source of waste in a business process. Therefore, it is valuable to analyze batch processing activities to identify waiting time wastes. Identifying and analyzing such wastes present the analyst with improvement opportunities that, if addressed, can improve the cycle time efficiency (CTE) of a business process. In this paper, we propose an approach that, given a process execution event log, (1) identifies batch processing activities, (2) analyzes their inefficiencies caused by different types of waiting times to provide analysts with information on how to improve batch processing activities. More specifically, we conceptualize different waiting times caused by batch processing patterns and identify improvement opportunities based on the impact of each waiting time type on the CTE. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of our approach to a real-life event log.
Through their growth in the postmodern and capitalist-oriented economies, “meetings”, all forms of MICE events (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Exhibitions) represent purely quantitative, ever more comprehensive, resource-consuming gatherings. Such a development does not only increase the complexity of the business gatherings in terms of their global economic importance, but also in terms of increasing CO2 emissions. In recent years there has been a response to this development and new potentials for a sustainable meeting industry has been created, driven also by the megatrend of digitalisation, and the innovations related to it. Although sustainability of meetings have already been discussed more from the perspective of environmentally friendly or resource-conserving use, the aim of this paper is to discuss innovative examples like virtual or hybrid events, i.e. a kind of mixed event consisting of physical and digital meetings. The methodology approach is based on a theoretical background and in the gathering of empirical evidence, combined with a literature review. The results indicate positive opportunities, risks and challenges by virtual and hybrid meetings by a sustainable perspective that contribute to solutions that go beyond the general approach of sustainability in the debate.
In response to the disruptive changes brought upon our society by the COVID-19 pandemic, most work activities and service providers had to resort to remote working. This is credited to reduce emissions for transportation, however the role of forced confinement within dwellings, especially if not designed for hosting working stations, deserves to be properly evaluated in terms of both user acceptance and long-term environmental impact. In this work, a dedicated survey campaign is used for investigating the potential pros and cons of remote working. In more detail, logistic regression and generalized linear models are used for capturing the effect of several independent variables on user acceptance of remote working. At a later stage, the main greenhouse gas emissions produced by each participant before and during remote working are assessed. According to the obtained results, the greater the distance between their home and workplace, the higher the acceptance score declared by the survey participants about remote working. Additionally, higher incomes and better-quality lifestyles with larger devotion to leisure activities also provide higher acceptance. Finally, the existence of a comfortable room to be used for work activities plays a crucial role on the declared acceptance. From an environmental point of view, remote working is always sustainable in case of long commuting distances (above 10 km) are avoided on a daily routine. In conclusion, a sensible use of remote working could reduce the environmental impact of any organization employing desk-workers as well as improve their work satisfaction and lifestyle.
Past research on food waste in foodservices has focused on restaurants in general and failed to examine how/if the ownership model of a restaurant business correlates with the approaches to food waste management adopted in-house. This study employs the qualitative research methods to explore how the challenge of food waste is managed in (inter)national chain-affiliated and (local) independent restaurants. It finds that whilst chain-affiliated businesses routinely measure food waste and have developed consistent measures to prevent and mitigate its occurrence, independent restaurants, particularly those specializing in ethnic cuisine, take no measurements of food waste and manage it on an ad-hoc basis. (Inter)national strategies on food waste prevention and mitigation in restaurants should therefore focus on independent foodservice operators as this is where the largest reduction potential rests. This study offers preliminary insights on the role of various stakeholders within the broader food system whose engagement is critical for effective food waste prevention and mitigation in restaurants.
Sustainable business events have the potential to diversify the tourism offering of destinations, to attract higher-spending visitors, and to elongate the tourism season, while economically, socially and environmentally benefiting host communities. Nonetheless, the incorporation of sustainability principles in business events requires coordinated actions and collaboration from a range of stakeholders, including service providers and those in decision-making positions. This research employed quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the perceptions of 50 business event attendees, 16 business event service providers, and five decision-makers in Cyprus with regards to the state of the business event sector’s sustainability, and obstacles and opportunities for its sustainable growth. Our findings suggest that very few sustainability practices are currently implemented in the organization of business events and demand for sustainability is relatively low. However, the provision of incentives coupled with trainings and capacity building for key actors within the supply chain as well as extensive horizontal awareness-raising activities could catalyze the transition of the business event sector toward sustainability and attract additional business events to Cyprus. Importantly, the emergence of a sustainable business event sector in Cyprus could also contribute to the sector’s and the country’s post-COVID-19 recovery.
Disassembly of a product is a systematic process of separating an item into components and subcomponents and is a key factor to foster a more circular economy where the resources are kept longer.
The aim of this study is to explore how to combine design for disassembly indicators with a life cycle-based tool and investigate the environmental benefits of design for disassembly. The general intent is to assess the environmental sustainability of an exhibition area, in a circular economy perspective, by using design for disassembly principles and carbon footprint methodology. The two methodologies are used to evaluate the environmental benefits in combination with the efforts to improve the disassembly aspects and to propose a method to normalize and scale up the impacts at higher level.
The obtained results show that, for this specific case study, improvements in terms of recycled content led to limited environmental benefits, reducing the impact of 1%. This is due to the fact that the practise of reutilisation was already applied largely by the company designing and producing the temporary installation under study; in addition, improvements of the recycling rate at the expense of reuse led to higher environmental impact, increasing the impact of 15% for this specific case study.
This analysis revealed that the efforts to improve the disassembly and the circularity can lead to limited improvements in terms of impact on the environment and efforts to increase material recycling should not be done at the expense of reuse.
What is transferable, beyond the case study used as a base to develop our intent, is that it is always advisable to combine design for disassembly and life cycle-based principles in order to quantify the environmental benefits and address the efforts to improve a product in terms of circularity.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused worldwide disruptions and changes, including in the way research was conducted. One aspect was the cancellation of in-person scientific conferences and the rapid replacement of some into virtual conferences. The aim of this study is to highlight the opportunities that virtual conferences can bring to animal behaviour and welfare research, with a focus on regional diversity and early career researchers (ECRs). The ISAE 2020 virtual meeting was used as a case study. Firstly, conference attendance was compared to the ISAE 2019 in-person international congress. Secondly, a post-conference survey was conducted (n = 142 responses). Data were analysed quantitatively (multinomial models) and qualitatively (word classifications). The organisation by geographical region attracted many non-local attendees and positive feedback was received on the global perspective. The participation from the ISAE developing regions AFRICA (Africa/Central Asia/Middle East), ASIA (South/East/Southeast Asia) and LATAM (Latin America) was higher as compared to the in-person conference (p < 0.001). The most valued advantage for the virtual conference was the reduced cost, followed by the increased ability to participate and the reduced environmental footprint. The most valued advantages did not differ between regions or attendees of different career stages, but an interaction showed that the ability to participate was more appreciated by ECRs in developing regions (p < 0.05). Over 75 % of the respondents ranked the absence of social interaction as the most important disadvantage. Respondents from developed regions were more likely to attend a future virtual conference with a registration fee as compared to those from developing regions (p < 0.05). Respondents most enjoyed the organisation, flexibility, quality of presentations and regional diversity from their virtual experience. This study showed that within applied animal behaviour and welfare science, the virtual format of an international conference can promote participation from diverse regions, especially from less financially privileged groups, but attention should be paid to enhance the social element of a virtual conference.
In dieser explorativen Arbeit wird die notwendige Änderung der Kommunikationskanäle in der ersten Phase der COVID-19-Pandemie thematisiert und darauf aufbauend werden mögliche Umsetzungsansätze für eine langfristige Nutzung virtueller Kommunikation in Forschung und Lehre skizziert. Dabei liegen der Arbeit folgende Forschungsfragen zugrunde: In welchem Teilbereich der akademischen Welt ist die Umstellung von Präsenzveranstaltungen auf die Nutzung von virtuellen Kommunikationsmedien möglich? Wie wird auf Twitter der zeitliche Verlauf der Kommunikation über virtuelle Austauschformate während der Corona-Krise abgebildet? Mit welchen Herausforderungen sind die Akteure beim Einsatz virtueller Austauschformate konfrontiert? Welche Vorteile haben virtuelle Austauschformate in den untersuchten Teilbereichen? Welches Potential für langfristige Nachhaltigkeit haben die positiven Aspekte des virtuellen Austauschs? Und welche Grenzen der dauerhaften Implementierung virtueller Austauschformate lassen sich aus den ersten Erfahrungen während der Corona-Krise ableiten? Die Twitter-Analyse zeigt zu Beginn der Corona-Maßnahmen den Anstieg in der Häufigkeit der Nennung verschiedener Begriffe, die im Zusammenhang mit virtuellem Austausch stehen. Außerdem wurden die in den Tweets enthaltenen Emotionen und ein überwiegend neutrales Sentiment im gefilterten Twitterdatensatz ermittelt. Durch die Darstellung der Tweet-Anzahl pro Staat weltweit konnte die globale Verteilung der Twitteraktivität zum Thema virtueller Austausch erfasst werden. Mit Hilfe einer Online-Umfrage wurden Erfahrungen mit virtuellen Events in Forschung und Lehre während der Pandemie festgehalten und analysiert. Zudem konnten Fragen in Bezug auf den zukünftigen Austausch in Forschung und Lehre ausgewertet werden. Die spontane Umstellung auf virtuelle Kommunikation stellte den Hochschulbetrieb vor große Herausforderungen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen jedoch unter anderem, dass drei Viertel der befragten Wissenschaftler*innen in Zukunft offen sind für virtuelle Events anstelle von Präsenzveranstaltungen. Neben vielen positiven Erfahrungen wie Zeitersparnis, CO2-Einsparungen oder erleichtertem Zugang, wurden auch einige negative Aspekte mit dem virtuellen Format verbunden. Vor allem die fehlende soziale Interaktion und der Mangel an sozialen Signalen während Konferenzen oder Meetings wurden häufig genannt. Um die Reichhaltigkeit der Kommunikation sowohl in der Forschung als auch in der Lehre aufrecht zu erhalten, werden auf Grundlage ökologischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Nachhaltigkeit Umsetzungsszenarien für einen langfristigen Ausbau des virtuellen Kommunikationskanals diskutiert. Die wichtigsten Aspekte beim langfristigen Umstieg auf virtuelle Kommunikation sind die Bereitstellung der notwendigen Hard- und Software, einer ausreichenden Internetbandbreite sowie regelmäßige Aus- und Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen im Zusammenhang mit virtueller Kommunikation. Auch stetiger Support für Mitarbeiter und Studierende muss gewährleistet sein.
The food that we consume has a large impact on our environment. The impact varies significantly between different diets. The aim of this systematic review is to address the question: Which diet has the least environmental impact on our planet? A comparison of a vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous diets. This systematic review is based on 16 studies and 18 reviews. The included studies were selected by focusing directly on environmental impacts of human diets. Four electronic bibliographic databases, PubMed, Medline, Scopus and Web of Science were used to conduct a systematic literature search based on fixed inclusion and exclusion criteria. The durations of the studies ranged from 7 days to 27 years. Most were carried out in the US or Europe. Results from our review suggest that the vegan diet is the optimal diet for the environment because, out of all the compared diets, its production results in the lowest level of GHG emissions. Additionally, the reviewed studies indicate the possibility of achieving the same environmental impact as that of the vegan diet, without excluding the meat and dairy food groups, but rather, by reducing them substantially.
The global impacts of food production
Food is produced and processed by millions of farmers and intermediaries globally, with substantial associated environmental costs. Given the heterogeneity of producers, what is the best way to reduce food's environmental impacts? Poore and Nemecek consolidated data on the multiple environmental impacts of ∼38,000 farms producing 40 different agricultural goods around the world in a meta-analysis comparing various types of food production systems. The environmental cost of producing the same goods can be highly variable. However, this heterogeneity creates opportunities to target the small numbers of producers that have the most impact.
Science , this issue p. 987
Purpose
Global beer consumption is growing steadily and has recently reached 187.37 billion litres per year. The UK ranked 8th in the world, with 4.5 billion litres of beer produced annually. This paper considers life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK which are currently unknown. The analysis is carried out for two functional units: (i) production and consumption of 1 l of beer at home and (ii) annual production and consumption of beer in the UK. The system boundary is from cradle to grave.
Methods
Life cycle impacts have been estimated following the guidelines in ISO 14040/44; the methodology for life cycle costing is congruent with the LCA approach. Primary data have been obtained from a beer manufacturer; secondary data are sourced from the CCaLC, Ecoinvent and GaBi databases. GaBi 4.3 has been used for LCA modelling and the environmental impacts have been estimated according to the CML 2001 method.
Results and discussion
Depending on the type of packaging (glass bottles, aluminium and steel cans), 1 l of beer requires for example 10.3–17.5 MJ of primary energy and 41.2–41.8 l of water, emits 510–842 g of CO2 eq. and has the life cycle costs of 12.72–14.37 pence. Extrapolating the results to the annual consumption of beer in the UK translates to a primary energy demand of over 49,600 TJ (0.56 % of UK primary energy consumption), water consumption of 1.85 bn hl (5.3 % of UK demand), emissions of 2.16 mt CO2 eq. (0.85 % of UK emissions) and the life cycle costs of £553 million (3.2 % of UK beer market value). Production of raw materials is the main hotspot, contributing from 47 to 63 % to the impacts and 67 % to the life cycle costs. The packaging adds 19 to 46 % to the impacts and 13 % to the costs.
Conclusions
Beer in steel cans has the lowest impacts for five out of 12 impact categories considered: primary energy demand, depletion of abiotic resources, acidification, marine and freshwater toxicity. Bottled beer is the worst option for nine impact categories, including global warming and primary energy demand, but it has the lowest human toxicity potential. Beer in aluminium cans is the best option for ozone layer depletion and photochemical smog but has the highest human and marine toxicity potentials.
This paper presents a novel quantitative methodology for the evaluation and optimisation of the environmental impacts of the whole life cycle of a mega-event project: construction and staging the event and post-event site redevelopment and operation. Within the proposed framework, a mathematical model has been developed that takes into account greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from use of transportation fuel, energy, water and construction materials used at all stages of the mega-event project.The model is applied to a case study - the London Olympic Park. Three potential post-event site design scenarios of the Park have been developed: Business as Usual (BAU), Commercial World (CW) and High Rise High Density (HRHD). A quantitative summary of results demonstrates that the highest GHG emissions associated with the actual event are almost negligible compared to those associated with the legacy phase. The highest share of emissions in the legacy phase is attributed to embodied emissions from construction materials (almost 50% for the BAU and HRHD scenarios) and emissions resulting from the transportation of residents, visitors and employees to/from the site (almost 60% for the CW scenario). The BAU scenario is the one with the lowest GHG emissions compared to the other scenarios. The results also demonstrate how post-event site design scenarios can be optimised to minimise the GHG emissions. The overall outcomes illustrate how the proposed framework can be used to support decision making process for mega-event projects planning.
Purpose
Private food consumption accounts for 30 % of total environmental impacts caused by the final consumption of Swiss households. The private expenses for gastronomy and hotels account for another 6 %. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate and better understand the environmental impacts of food consumption and the possibilities for a reduction of these impacts. This was the starting point for the collaboration between the canteen operator SV Group, the life cycle assessment (LCA) consultancy ESU-services, the energy supplier ewz and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Switzerland focusing on food consumption in canteens.
Methods
In a first step, an LCA study was used to analyse the environmental impacts of about 20 million meals served in 240 canteens in 2011. LCA data for 160 food items were linked to the food amounts of about 10,000 articles purchased in this year. This was supplemented by data on canteen operation and resulted in a full organisational LCA.
Results and discussion
The impacts of food purchases are about four times higher than the direct impacts due to the operation of the canteens. The most important product groups are meat and dairy products. Improvement potentials have been identified within 14 different themes by the project group. They include measures in the canteen operation (e.g. reduction of food waste or energy-efficient appliances); measures in the supply chain, e.g. a reduction of vegetables grown in heated greenhouses; or the abandonment of air-transported products. But also dietary choices such as a reduction of the average amount of meat per meal are considered as an option. The results and recommendations of the detailed LCA as well as information by other partners have been used by the SV Group to develop the programme ONE TWO WE. It assists the customers (companies who commission the operation of canteens in their premises) to reach improved levels of environmental performance. The programme aims for a 20 % cut on GHG emissions after full implementation in the participating canteens.
Conclusions
The programme started successfully with many customers positively convinced by the proposed changes in the provision of canteen meals. An initial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the baseline was achieved. This LCA study is a good example for the value of calculating a full organisational environmental footprint for a company in the gastronomy sector and for using the results of such a study to bring down the overall environmental impacts.
The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to many scientists, including ecologists and conservation biologists, are often much greater than those attributable to average non-scientists (Fox et al. 2009, Synolakis and Foteinis 2009, Burke 2010, Spinellis and Louridas 2013). The majority of these 'extra' GHG emissions are due to air travel, primarily to conduct research or to attend professional meetings and conferences (Achten et al. 2013). Considering the potential harm that GHG emissions can cause to the global environment, the scientific community should be aiming to better manage its academic activities to minimize GHG emissions and the associated ecological footprint (Favaro 2014).
Purpose
This paper performs a life cycle assessment study for a white wine produced in the northern part of Portugal, i.e. the white vinho verde. The purpose is to identify the environmental impacts occurring along the wine life cycle as well as the stages that mostly contribute to the environmental impact, as well as the associated causes. The stages considered include: (1) viticulture, (2) wine production (vinification to storage), (3) wine distribution and (4) bottles production.
Methods
The consumption of materials and energy, as well as the emissions to air, soil and water from the wine campaign of 2008/2009 were reported to the functional unit (0.75 l of white vinho verde). A Portuguese company that produces about 25 % of the current total production of white vinho verde supplied specific life cycle data for the stages of viticulture, wine production and distribution. SimaPro and the Ecoinvent database were used to perform the environmental assessment using CML 2001 impact methodology. A sensitivity analysis for a set of significant parameters was performed.
Results
Results show that for viticulture the contribution of each impact category is larger than 50 %. The production of bottles is the second contributor varying from about 4 % (to eutrophication) to 26 % (to acidification). Wine production and distribution are the subsequent contributors. The contribution of wine production varies between 0.6 % (to land competition) and about 13 % (from marine aquatic and sediment ecotoxicity 100a). The contribution of distribution is up to 14 % (to photochemical oxidation). Sensitivity analysis shows that significant changes are calculated for parameters as the nitrate leaching to groundwater, the emission of nitrous oxide from managed soil, and from runoff and leaching. Changes in these parameters are significant for only a few impact categories as eutrophication and global warming.
Conclusions
Viticulture is the stage with the largest relative contribution to the overall environmental impact and the bottle production is the subsequent stage. In order to improve the environmental performance of the supply chain for wine, it is necessary to optimise the dosage of fertilisers and phytosanitary products used during viticulture. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the most influential parameters relate with the emission of nitrogen compounds associated with the use of fertilisers.
A conference in the conventional form is a very resource-demanding
process with considerable environmental impacts. As the host of the 15th International Environmental Informatics Symposium, held in Zurich, October 10–12, 2001, EMPA assessed the effectiveness of different measures to reduce the environmental impact of the conference using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method.
During the preparation of the conference, we considered the following measures to make the symposium more ‘‘environmentally friendly’’:
(1) Reducing the conference materials produced for the participants to a minimum, but keeping the proceedings in book form.
(2) Eliminating the proceedings in book form, and giving participants a digital media instead.
(3) Holding a virtual conference to which no one travels, as all speeches and discussions could be offered on the Internet.
The action required to stem the environmental and social implications of climate change depends crucially on how humankind shapes technology, economy, lifestyle and policy. With transport CO2 emissions accounting for about a quarter of the total, we examine the contribution of CO2 output by scientific travel. Thankfully for the reputation of the scientific community, CO2 emissions associated with the trips required to present a paper at a scientific conference account for just 0.003% of the yearly total. However, with CO2 emissions for a single conference trip amounting to 7% of an average individual's total CO2 emissions, scientists should lead by example by demonstrating leadership in addressing the issue.
The purpose of this exploratory study was to develop a list of sustainable practices at convention facilities and assess the importance of these items according to meeting planners. The recycling of items had the highest levels of importance. Significant differences were found between third party and association meeting planners’ levels of importance in the areas of water resources, energy efficiency, and recycling. Length of being a Certified Meeting Planner was not related to the importance of sustainability practices. Females placed more value on programs that capture separate organic waste for composting and on energy certification than did their male counterparts. Results give meeting planners and venues a clearer picture of the current state of sustainable practices and its importance in the meeting, incentive, convention and event (MICE) industry. However, further research is needed, and discussed.
Background, aim and scope In 2005, a comprehensive comparison of life cycle impact assessment toxicity characterisation models was initiated by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)-Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative, directly involving the model developers of CalTOX, IMPACT 2002, USES-LCA, BETR, EDIP, WATSON and EcoSense. In this paper, we describe this model comparison process and its results-in particular the scientific consensus model developed by the model developers. The main objectives of this effort were (1) to identify specific sources of differences between the models' results and structure, (2) to detect the indispensable model components and (3) to build a scientific consensus model from them, representing recommended practice.
In recent years, several tools have been used to define and quantify the environmental impacts associated with an event; however, a lack of uniform approaches for conducting environmental evaluations has been revealed. The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, which is rarely applied to an event, can be an appropriate tool for calculating the environmental impacts associated with the assembly, disassembly, and use phase of an event analysing in particular the components and the displays used to establish the exhibits. The aim is also to include the issues reported by ISO 20121:2012 involving the interested parties that can be monitored but also affected by the event owner, namely the event organiser, the workforce and the supply chain.
A small event held in Northern Italy was selected as the subject of the research. The results obtained show that the main contributors are energy consumption for lighting and heating and the use of aluminium materials, such as bars for supporting the spotlights, carpet and the electronic equipment. A sensitivity analysis for estimating the effects of the impact assessment method chosen has also been conducted and an uncertainty analysis has been performed using the Monte Carlo technique. This study highlighted the importance of the energy consumed by heating and lighting on the environmental implications, and indicated that the preparation and assembly should always be considered when quantifying the environmental profile of an event.
Scientists across the globe recognize the importance of reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change. At the same time, we have increased our carbon footprint through air travel to the growing number of scientific society “mega-meetings” that host thousands of attendees. Although alternative solutions have been proposed to reduce the environmental impact of annual conferences, these have yet to be evaluated against the business-as-usual scenario. Here, we use 9 years of annual meeting attendance data from the Ecological Society of America and the Association of American Geographers to assess the efficacy of two additional solutions: 1) alternate large national meetings that require significant air travel with smaller regional meetings that do not; and 2) incorporate geography into the meeting location selection process. The carbon footprint of annual mega-meetings ranged 3-fold, from 1196-4062 metric tons of CO2. Results indicate that an alternating schedule of national and regional meetings can reduce conference-related CO2 emissions up to 73%, while improved spatial planning may result in further reductions. We discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of proposals to green scientific meetings, with a view to spark further debate on how to increase the sustainability of scientific conferences.
Agricultural economists recognise that climate change is one of the key challenges of our time. Yet, the carbon footprint of research activities has received little attention to date. Air travel from and to academic conferences is a major contributor to the carbon footprint of researchers. This article calculates the carbon emissions due to air travel of the 14th Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2014 and proposes strategies to reduce them. Total CO2 emissions are estimated at around 300 tonnes or 0.5 tonne per participant. There are, however, large differences between participants, with 10 per cent of the participants accounting for 50 per cent of the emissions. Strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of the Congress are considered. Reducing the number of participants from non-European countries that attend the conference could significantly reduce emissions. Organising the Congress at a more central location in Europe in combination with promoting travelling by train could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by another 20 per cent. It is argued that researchers, including agricultural economists, should lead by example and undertake actions to reduce the carbon footprint of their profession. © 2015 Agricultural Economics Society and European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE).
Sustainability research has entered an era of data abundance, in which online repositories offer millions of facts on production, consumption, pollution, and impacts. The combination of such facts in linear models leads increasingly to computational problems, relating to memory, speed, accuracy, and stability. This paper examines this phenomenon from the perspective of three widely-used types of sustainability analysis: multi-media fate and exposure models, life cycle assessment of products, and environmentally extended input-output analysis. The paper describes the various theoretical arguments, some indicators, and some solutions. Moreover, it adds the empirical evidence from one of these analysis types, namely life cycle assessment. It concludes that the phenomena indeed occur in practice, that abstract indicators ignore the subtle differences between different types of environmental impacts, and that a sound strategy for dealing with these problems is the critical analysis of results together with the variation of the computational principles.
The management of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions is currently a very important environmental issue. Mega-event organizers and host cities have attached great importance to GHGs emissions associated with event-related activities. However, GHGs emissions from event solid waste have never been thoroughly discussed. This study investigated GHGs emissions of major event's solid waste using life cycle assessment, based on Shanghai Expo case. The results showed that GHGs from collecting and sorting, transportation and landfill treatment amount to 9790 t CO(2)e. And the emission intensity is estimated to be 134 g CO(2)e per event service. GHGs reduction from recycling amounts to 48 kt CO(2)e, with 78 % of these the result of construction waste recycle. It illustrates that waste recycle plays a vital role in GHGs mitigation. Finally, the study suggests that the concept of waste avoidance, waste reuse and waste recycle is an effective waste management to mitigate climate change and should be implemented in major event to achieve the goal of green event.
The carbon footprint of spectator and team travel was analyzed at small-scale varsity sports events held at the University of British Columbia. Sport management literature suggests a need for quantitative environmental impact studies of events, in particular to seek out transport footprint reduction opportunities. This study applies a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based approach to increase methodological rigour and transparency. We analyze travel patterns of spectators and teams and put forward several scenarios for impact reduction. Results show that UBC spectators had a smaller footprint than teams on a per person basis but a larger overall carbon footprint. Although only 4% of the spectators travelled by air, this constituted 52% of total spectator impact. We find the biggest opportunities for footprint reductions by spectators and teams alike are strategies that (a) reduce long-distance air travel, (b) increase vehicle occupancy rates, and (c) encourage low-emission travel mode choices.
Highlights
► Measures are urgently needed to cut carbon emissions of international conferences. ► Decentralization works if venues are selected based on the origin of applicants. ► A two venue event may cut emissions by 20% with good participation at each venue. ► An effective carbon reduction strategy should play at the global level.
Previous efforts to evaluate the climate change impact of researchers have focused mainly on transport related impact of conference attendance, and infrastructure. Because these represent only a part of the activities involved in the science making process this short note presents the carbon footprint of a complete science making process of one specific case. Apart from presenting the total footprint, we evaluate the relative contribution of the different scientific activities, and quantify mitigating possibilities. The case PhD project had a carbon footprint of 21.5 t CO2-eq (2.69 t CO2-eq per peer-reviewed paper, 0.3 t CO2-eq per citation and 5.4 t CO2-eq per h-index unit at graduation) of which general mobility represents 75%. Conference attendance was responsible for 35% of the carbon footprint, whereas infrastructure related emissions showed to contribute 20% of the total impact. Videoconferencing could have reduced the climate change impact on this case PhD with up to 44%. Other emission reduction initiatives, such as using green electricity, reduction of energy consumption, and promoting commuting by bicycle, could have triggered a reduction of 14% in this case study. This note fits in the movement of academics and universities willing to be green. The study confirms that researchers' mobility is the biggest contributor to his or her carbon footprint, but is not limited to conference attendance, showing the importance of considering all activities in the science making process. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Results from an analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption during the life-cycle of carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, pork, rice and dry peas consumed in Sweden are presented and discussed. The life-cycle is delineated to the part of the production chain prior to purchase by the consumer. The study shows that emissions, expressed in g CO2 equivalents, are highest for pork and rice and lowest for potatoes, carrots and dry peas. The most important stages of emissions in the life-cycle are identified for each of the different food items. Crop farming is the most important stage for rice and tomatoes while rearing of animals is the most important stage for pork and storage is the most important stage for carrots. Comparison with an energy analysis shows that important stages in the life-cycle of food may be under-evaluated when energy only is accounted for. This may lead to a sub-optimisation of pollution control exemplified by the case of transportation. Also, it is shown that the choice of functional unit has a decisive influence on the outcome of the study. The recommendation is to compare whole meals, or diets with the same nutritional qualities. A comparison of four meals composed of the food items under analysis shows that a meal with tomatoes, rice and pork has nine times higher emissions than a meal made from potatoes, carrots and dry peas. Emissions of greenhouse gases from consumption patterns based on the food items analysed are compared with an assumed sustainable limit of greenhouse gas emissions. The conclusion is that current food consumption patterns in the developed countries exceed the level of sustainability by at least a factor of 4. Prospects for achieving sustainable food consumption patterns are questionable in view of current trends in food demand.
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Life cycle assessment of tea produced in Kenya
- A Azapagic
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Guide e Sustainable Event Management
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Does it matter which Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool you choose? e a comparative assessment of SimaPro and GaBi
- I T Herrmann
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