[OSGeo-Conf] Awake some awareness on leaving waste and raise our CO2 footprint after F4G events

[Till Adams]

Dear ConfComm!

There is one issue I'd like to mention and perhaps this is also a topic
on that we, as a responsible community, should adress to.

Recently I've been to FOSS4G Europe in Paris and I recognized, that a
lot of one-way cups and non-returnable bottles were offered during
breaks. Thinking back to F4G Europe in Como in 2015 there was even
single-use tableware offered for lunch.

To make that clear: My goal is not to ask the organizers of the named
conferences for justification !!! Both conferences have been phantastic
events!

I'd like more to awake our environmental awareness somehow:

We also had this issue on a FOSSGIS few years ago; a lot of single-use
stuff was used for break-caterings. Since this conference, we ask
organizers to only offer recycable tableware and bottles on
FOSSGIS-conferences.


When on the one side one of the goals of our community is to contribute
to a better world, it makes not much sense, when we leave amounts of
waste behind us and have a raising CO2-footprint after every of our events.

For Bonn we decided not to offer any non-recycable stuff, we also asked
attendees to balance their CO2-emmission because of flights on a
voluntary base (eg. atmosfair). To be honest, I don't know if anybody
did, but at least we tried.

Maybe that's because I am german and although we sell fraudulent
diesel-cars, we have a favour for recycable bottles, cans and everything
(even French winemakers put a green dot on their bottles, to indicate,
that they are recycable in Germany ;-)) and I also know, that it is
often not that easy to have this offer in other countries as well - but:

How about adding a topic "Environmental Responsibility" to our
"Conference Manual" and encourage future LOC's to have an enhanced eye
on these kind of topics? We also might request that future bids include
an abstract on how to handle this issue based on the local
possibilities. It's up to every ConfComm-member, how to include that
into his/her voting.


Till