A carbon neutral event

Climate Impact Day 2021

As Glacier we pledged to be a carbon-neutral company from Day 1. Not just because we’re a Climate-Startup, but because it is the right thing to do for us as a company and for our planet.

To achieve carbon-neutrality from Day 1, it was crucial for us to minimize the carbon footprint of our Climate Impact Day and make it a carbon neutral event.

We took a variety measure to reduce the carbon footprint of CID as far as possible to hold an environmentally friendly event. For our efforts, we obtained the Green Meetings certification from the Österreichisches Umweltzeichen. To obtain this certification, there are requirements to meet regarding mobility, venue, accommodations, catering, material, waste management and social aspects and communication.

Despite all reduction measures taken, there is a baseline of unavoidable emissions caused by the mobility of the offline participants, the live-stream, or the catering. To determine these emissions – and to identify main drivers for future improvements - we calculated the Climate Impact Day's carbon footprint and compensated the unavoidable emissions with high quality offsets

Decreasing carbon emissions of company events can be challenging. That's why we would like to share some of our insights from the Climate Impact Day organization to inspire you to host you first very own carbon-neutral company event, no matter if it is a customer reception, a multi-day conference or a staff Christmas party that is around the corner.

How did we reduce the carbon footprint of Climate Impact Day?

To minimize our carbon emissions, we implemented a variety of reduction measures in the areas of mobility, venue, material, waste management and catering.

The following three measures were the most impactful measures to reduce the Climate Impact Day’s emissions:

1. Choosing a climate-friendly location:

We hosted the livestream at the well-known Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna. The museum is not just an impressive traditional Viennese building, but also has two major climate-related advantages:

• The venue uses high-quality UZ certified electricity, which is transparently produced by renewable sources and guaranteed to be free of nuclear and fossil fuels.

• It is easily accessible by public transport, which reduces the need for commuting CO2-emitting personal cars.

2. Hosting a hybrid event:

The action day was held based on an innovative hybrid concept. Which means it there was a physical venue at the MAK, but most speakers, experts, companies, and their employees joined via live stream. This is particularly interesting in terms of mobility need reduction, and as a result to reduce CO2 emissions. Indeed, this format avoids unnecessary commutation of all the employees from another part of Austria or internationally.

3. Vegetarian food at the event venue:

• Meat consumption remains a concern as livestock farming contributes extensively to greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, our audience at the venue was offered a variety of delicious vegetarian and vegan meals.

• Also, many of the companies participating in the Climate Impact Day encouraged their employees to make the day a meat-free day or even made their canteens vegetarian on the day.

4. Waste reduction and management system:

• To limit the quantity of waste generated by the offline event, we used a sustainable stage design. The stage was built with paper from the company PaperTown and will be reused for the next edition of our event.
• For the offline event, we used the efficient waste management system of the MAK. We also encouraged participating companies to take waste reduction and management measure by sending them a guideline of actions to host the Climate Impact Days in their offices.

What was the actual carbon footprint of Climate Impact Day?

Although we obtained the Green-Meeting certification, it was important to us to evaluate the impact of our reduction measures and get insights on the carbon footprint of our event. On the one hand, to be able to compensate for unavoidable emissions. On the other hand reduce our emissions next time and stick to our carbon-neutrality pledge.

The process of calculating the Climate Impact Day’s carbon footprint is divided into four categories:

1. Identifying relevant data,
2. Collecting data,
3. Calculating the footprint, and
4. Interpretating the data.

Considering all relevant activities and including scopes 1-3, the Climate Impact Day 2021 has caused less than one ton of CO2 emissions. Overall, 970 kg of CO2 emissions were generated.

If you’re not familiar with scopes, you can find more information on the website of the greenhouse gas protocol.

What we see is that the venue and mobility most significant drivers of the action day’s carbon footprint. This may be surprising, given that it was a hybrid event with a careful and climate-conscious choice of venue.

But…what would have been the carbon footprint of an action day that would have been entirely offline without the pre-emptively implemented reduction measures? In fact, if all speakers had come on-site instead of video-streaming and meat-based meals for our audience, the carbon footprint would have been four times higher! And that’s a lot…

Offset of our remaining emissions

Following our pledge to be carbon neutral from day 1, we chose to compensate our remaining emissions with high quality offset. We decided to overcompensate our event’s emission by 20% and bought 1.2 ton of offsets allocated to the following projects available in the patch.io portfolio:

• Husk Biochar: This carbon-based fertilizer project is not only sequestrating carbon from the air, but also improving soils quality!
• Kenya International Small Group Tree Planting (TIST): This afforestation project is based in Kenya and certified by Gold Standard.
• GreenSand: This carbon removal method has the big advantage to sequester carbon permanently!

How can your company host a carbon-neutral event?

As a company, you are probably hosting several internal or external events every year. Hosting green or carbon-neutral events is not only reducing your overall corporate carbon footprint but making events “green” can give you an edge over competitors or impress your employees.

You don’t know where or how to start to make your event carbon-neutral? No worries! We created a list of actions you can implement to decrease the climate impact of your company’s events:

1. Include carbon reduction in the event planning:

• Analyze previous events: You can investigate events you held in the past, by identifying where most of the emissions came from: mobility, food, venue…
• Follow the guidelines of an eco-label: Not only will this allow you to certify your event, but this will also help you to trigger the emission reduction measures you can implement before and during your event. In Austria, Österreichisches Umweltzeichen provides a detailed framework to reduce the footprint of your events. Internationally, the ISO 20121 guideline for sustainable events can be a valuable guideline here.

2. Calculate your event carbon footprint:

• Identify and collect the necessary data: The estimation of your event’s carbon footprint requires data identification before and during the event to be able to perform the calculation.
• Identify the main sources of emissions: Calculating your event’s carbon footprint will help you estimate the impact of your emission reduction measures and understand where you should concentrate your actions for the next edition.

3. Offset the remaining emissions:

• Offset only the unavoidable emissions!
• Buy high-quality offsets: There are many possibilities to support offset projects to compensate emissions, but just a few of them are helpful to mitigate climate change. To avoid pitfalls, make sure that the offsets are certified with recognized standards like PAS2060.

If you are keen on hosting carbon-neutral events but are not sure about how to implement reduction measures in your company or to calculate your carbon footprint, Glacier is here to help!

Get in touch with us here or contact us on hello@glacier.eco.