Events generate a large amount of waste and often leave a large carbon footprint. With this in mind, the RACS ASC Conference and Events Team is making changes to the way the ASC runs in order to avoid the depletion of natural resources. Our goal is to help maintain the environment or at minimum ecological balance.
We want to work with our delegates to ensure that we reduce our environmental footprint and subsequently reduce the amount of damage we do to our environment. Help us achieve our goals and familiarise yourself with changes you can make not only onsite but pre and post-congress as well to reduce your environmental footprint.
We’ve outlined some important things to help us meet our goals, click on the links below to find out more. What’s changing and how can you help?
If you’re staying at a hotel during the ASC, you have a lot of control over the environmental impact of your stay. Seek out programs that your hotel may already have in place and take advantage of these to help reduce your environmental impact.
Consider the below to make your stay as green as possible:
What are we doing?
RACS is working closely with the Adelaide Convention Centre (ACC) to reduce our waste and environmental footprint in relation to food and beverage consumption at the ASC. Browse below to see what we are up to!
More Plant Based Options
Overall, animal-based foods tend to have a higher carbon footprint than plant-based foods; which is why in addition to sourcing food locally, we’re focusing on reducing the amount of meat and animal products throughout our menus in 2023. In addition to being better for the environment, it’s also healthier for our bodies as a healthy diet consists largely of a diversity of plant-based foods and low amounts of animal source foods.
Check out the effects the foods we consume have on our environment here.
Flying to Adelaide?
We understand that for some delegates, getting to the ASC via air travel is necessary. If you have to fly, consider some of the things you can do below to reduce your carbon footprint.
Public Transport in Adelaide
The Adelaide Convention Centre purchase 98% of our food and beverage from local suppliers, which not only injects over $4.1 million into the state’s economy, but also results in fewer “food miles”. While everyone contributes, the Centre’s environmental innovation is driven by the ‘Green Team’ – a group of staff volunteers who formed a committee to research and develop ideas and promote environmentally-responsible practices among the organisation.
Initiatives driven by staff include recycling reading glasses for Lions Recycle for Sight Australia, recycling shoes by donating them to Soles 4 Souls, and planting trees through our corporate partnership with Trees for Life – we have an annual tree planting day every year.
The team’s latest initiative is to set up systems to recycle all of the Centre’s Nespresso coffee pods. The 90,000 pods used at the Centre annually are being diverted from the landfill waste stream; that’s 1,400kg of aluminium and organic waste!
In 2014, the Adelaide Convention Centre received notification that the Centre achieved Gold Certification under the globally recognised EarthCheck environmental program. EarthCheck is run by environmental advocacy group EC3 Global, and it is the standard environmental best practice program used by convention centres, travel and tourism organisations around the world. Our Gold Certification achievement followed the Centre’s five years of continuous silver certification. Throughout the process of striving for EarthCheck’s benchmarks, we’ve significantly reduced our environmental footprint.
Read more about what the Adelaide Convention Centre is doing here.
What are we doing?
Conferences and events today generate enormous amounts of waste, leaving a lasting environmental footprint. A delegate typically discards 1.89kg of waste per day, 1.16kg of this goes directly to landfill.
We are working on maximising our diversion from landfill, check out what we are implementing to achieve this below:
