Let's make a large event greener...

“They say the easiest way to go is disposables.”

When you hold site celebrations, they can be A LOT OF WORK. On one side of the scale is doing a small booth for earth day in your cafeteria. You need volunteers, giveaways or activities, messaging, and prep and event time away from your regular job (and that’s just for 1 cafeteria table for 2 hrs on Earth Day that will hit around 100 people).
• Now, imagine doing that for a 10,000 person Family Day at your location! It can get overwhelming if you don’t eat that endangered elephant one bite at a time. In the mix of making sure that you remember tell catering to place the ice with the drinks, finding where facilities stored the time capsule you’re supposed to unveil, and keeping to your budget, many of the actions you can take to minimize your ecological footprint during the event run right out the door (pun intended)!
• To counteract that, we always put a person on our team whose sole focus is “sustainability”. That used to be me on teams, but as you go up in your green career, you’ll need others to be that person- even for you! Sure, they will point out when you have a spelling mistake in the flyer, but their main focus is to let us know when we are missing an eco-opportunity.

Here are some eco-opportunities that our team had from a recent event:
• Having hamburgers at your event? Consider also a veggie burger option.
• Can you use large reusable pumps and containers for the mustard and ketchup?
• Can you serve meals in a compostable paper boat instead of Styrofoam or metal wrap? Then just have compost bins to collect waste that day.
• Having to use bottled water? Place recycling bins with signage everywhere people pick up bottles or throw away trash to close the loop.
• Had to use a bus last time to shuttle visitors from 1 area to another? Try decreasing the footprint on your event so it’s walkable.
• Spent too much money on a rented tent and disposable warming trays to feed people? Use your existing cafeteria to hand out the food.
• Threw away all your welcome signs, directional signs, maps, etc from last time because you put the year and date on them? Let’s make them generic so you can reuse them again next time.
• Couldn’t GIVE away the extra goodies later from the event as prizes at your company because they said Family Day on it? Why not just put your company logo on it instead.
• Get a lot of silly sleeves for your giveaway Frisbees that you aren’t going to use? Why not donate them to an up-cycling charity.
• And the opportunities continue…