Visit Malta

Brief

Working with Visit Malta, SMS Events and the Westin Dragonara Resort Hotel, we ran a retrospective Carbon Consultancy process on an international company’s annual conference in order to guide and advise on how they could enable their events programme to become more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint for future events.

Location: Malta
Client: International
Number of Delegates: 150

Detail

Customer head office is located in Paris, with 6 regional offices in Europe and an additional office in the USA. This was their first face to face meeting post pandemic, with 150 delegates attending a 5-day conference at the Westin Dragonara Resort hotel in Malta.

80 delegates travelled from France with the balance of delegates attending from the European offices and the USA office being represented by 6 delegates.

Carbon Dioxide Graphic

Solution

The carbon footprint for this specific event was measured at 267 tonnes. Travel made up 84% (225 tonnes) of the footprint. Entertainment was flown in from the USA and Europe and equated to 30 tonnes. With regards to the other flights, five airlines were used, all of which have offset programmes in place and whilst this would not have taken away the footprint, it would have been a positive step on the overall impact. Catering, at 28 tonnes, was the 2nd largest impact on the overall event footprint and choosing options that incorporated plant based or white meat options would have the impact of reducing catering by up to 75%. There was also a team building exercise on the middle afternoon of the conference and the company chose to run an activity which gave back to the local community.

By running this as a retrospective exercise, we have made numerous suggestions as to how we would have reduced the impact on this event that can be utilised for future events. We would have achieved a 25% reduction in carbon footprint, saving 67 tonnes in the process.

Aside from those recommendations already made, there are also a number of practical initiatives that will be implemented in the future. For example, using an event app cuts down on printed materials used, advising delegates to bring refillable water bottles and their own pads and paper also has a positive impact. Delegate badges will also now be made with recyclable materials. 

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