With around 200-250 attendees, the EARSeL Symposium is a medium scale event and its environmental impact expected to be moderate. Nevertheless, we can try to minimize our footprint with regard to travelling to and within Manchester, accommodation, catering, venue, information media, badges, signage, printed programmes, welcome bags and other items or activities related to this workshop. We are aiming to take ecological, economic, and social aspects into account in advance during the planning phase and give preference to catering companies as well as suppliers and event service providers who operate sustainably.
We strongly encourage all attendees to help reduce the environmental impact of their participation by considering the following:
- travelling by train, bus, metro, or bicycle to and in Manchester whenever possible
- bringing a reusable water bottle (and coffee-to-go cup)
- checking the Symposium information online instead of having printed material (however, a small paper programme book will be provided to all participants during the on-site registration)
Travelling
We encourage participants to travel by train whenever possible.
Within Manchester, most places are in easy reach by local public transport (efficient tram and bus system), bike or foot.
If you can’t avoid travelling by car, consider offering a lift.
Catering
Coffee and tea at the workshop will be served in reusable cups; however, we encourage participants to bring their own multi-use coffee mugs for their coffee(s) to go.
To benefit from existing infrastructure, to avoid resource intense transportation, and to finally reduce participation fees, we will make use of local caterers for lunch and coffee breaks. All food served at the venue will include vegetarian options, be mostly seasonal and wherever possible from regional sources.
We base our decisions for catering partners also on their efforts to reduce packaging waste to a minimum.
Material
We will offer a printed paper programme book, however, reduced to essential information (Symposium schedule overview, session schedule overview, overview maps of venue sites). This will be printed with water colours on 100% FSC or recycled paper. All other information will be available online.
Name badges will consist of 100% FSC or recycled paper, printed with water colours.
There will be no welcome gift bags, sorry!
We attempt to avoid printed advertisements but will offer digital displays instead.
Feedback
We warmly welcome feedback and suggestions on how we can further improve and reduce the environmental impact of our events (secretariat@earsel.org).
