Maria Simonelli and Slawka Bell from ICLEI Oceania (far right) with Melbourne Lord Mayor John So (centre) and other Melbourne Award winners ICLEI Oceania has won a Melbourne Award for its Accelerating Now! conference, held in Melbourne during May 2007.

‘Green Event’ wins Melbourne Award for ICLEI Oceania

The annual Melbourne Awards celebrate the people and organisations whose vision and hard work shapes the city of Melbourne.

Maria Simonelli, Director – Special Projects for ICLEI Oceania, accepted the ‘Community Organisation – Contribution to Environment‘ trophy at a special awards presentation on Saturday 30 August.

The award-winning conference was undertaken as a ‘green event’, and demonstrated a range of sustainable management practices, including waste reduction, resource conservation and carbon emissions reduction and offsetting.

Second award for the conference

This was the second award for the conference, which also won a Meetings & Events Industry (MEA) Victoria state award earlier this year. ICLEI Oceania and the conference organisers, The Meeting Planners, were recognised for successfully producing a carbon neutral event.

A four day international conference with over 400 delegates

Accelerating Now! was a four-day, international conference that brought together the local government sector and stakeholders to celebrate the successes of the organisation over its ten years in the region, while also looking to the future. However, ICLEI Oceania is well aware of the negative environmental effects of holding such a large-scale event.

‘Events are notoriously large consumers of resources,’ said Maria Simonelli, Director – Special Projects, ICLEI Oceania. ‘With over 420 delegates from across Australia and New Zealand attending, we had to take responsibility for our potential environmental impacts.’

‘Green’ features of the conference included:

• Considering event locations – choosing a central location that was well serviced for mobility and accessibility.
• Choosing a venue – selecting a conference venue that was committed to sustainable practices wherever possible, and open to requests from event organisers to reduce waste.
• Minimising emissions from travel – most greenhouse gas emissions generated by a conference are the result of transport to and from the event. A $20 offset fee was included in registration costs and allocated toward an accredited emissions offset program.
• Minimising resource use – using electronic modes for marketing, printing all necessary materials on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, and substituting the traditional conference satchel loaded with printed information for a ‘green stick’, a flash drive that contained detailed program information and sponsor materials.
• Energy consumption – purchasing GreenPower for the event and gala dinner.
• Sustainable transport – providing sustainable transport information in the marketing materials and encouraging walking between venues.

Using Triple Bottom Line principles: People, Planet, Profit

‘Our focus is on using triple bottom line and sustainability principles to embed a new approach to events management. Reducing the impact of our conference is a practical demonstration of how this is achieved,’ said Ms Simonelli.

‘As a consequence we are changing community behaviours and educating the local government sector, businesses, sponsors and events managers on alternative approaches.’

Case study available

A case study detailing the Accelerating Now! conference green event approach is available to download from the ICLEI Oceania website: