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

[Eli Adam]

Hi Till and all,

This is a worthwhile topic and one that we worked on locally for a
very minor one day event.

For the one day event, it was the same group of organizers year after
year.  The earlier years it took all our attention just to organize
and put the event on.  As we got better at it and also evaluated the
event, we realized that there were many aspects of the event that we
personally found very offensive (single use disposable packaging,
tableware, bottled water, etc).  We were able to shift to less
disposable packaging, metal tableware, bulk beverages and people
bringing their own bottles or mugs, etc.  This was mostly gradual and
only possible by working on it year after year.

There are things like this that I think are best addressed gradually
year after year.  However, FOSS4G is not really an annual conference.
Or it is an annual conference for attendees, but not organizers.  The
conference starts more or less from scratch each year with a new LOC.
Moving to institutionalize some of the FOSS4G LOC functions that would
provide continuity from year to year could enable more focus on
worthwhile issues like this.  There would be other benefits too.

Best regards, Eli

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 6:09 AM, Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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