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

Tue Jul 25 00:52:23 PDT 2017

Hi all,
Definitely a good idea to look at ways to be more sustainable, especially with things like disposable cups and plates. However, I'm not sure I would avoid using paper for things like posters. Monitors are required expensive, use electricity and lots of non-recyclable resources to make. I've never seen the environmental impact balance between posters and monitors, but would not be surprised if paper was much more sustainable for the environment. 

I would strongly pledge for a conference timing that is NOT during July or August. That conflicts with European summer holidays making it hard to participate for many. 

My 2-cents, cheers, Jeroen

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> Op 24 jul. 2017 om 20:54 heeft Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> Good points. For posters we can arrange rolling display of posters in a big monitor. It will help accommodate more posters, reduce space needed for display also.
> 
> Suchith
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Conference_dev <conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Maria Antonia Brovelli <maria.brovelli at polimi.it>
> Sent: 24 July 2017 7:07 PM
> To: Till Adams
> Cc: conference; eadam at co.lincoln.or.us
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] Awake some awareness on leaving waste and raise our CO2 footprint after F4G events
> 
> Thanks Till
> I think that it is enough easy to do. We shall put it in the guidelines.
> Probably good also to avoid printing the program. Also for posters we can find different solutions avoiding printing them. In this way we save papers and, at the end, trees.
> And we don't need bags as well.
> Good points. I agree.
> Best,
> Maria
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my Samsung device
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Eli Adam <eadam at co.lincoln.or.us>
> Date: 24/07/2017 19:42 (GMT+01:00)
> To: Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de>
> Cc: conference <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] Awake some awareness on leaving waste and raise our CO2 footprint after F4G events
> 
> 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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