Walk-the-talk: Sustainable events management as common practice for sustainability conferences

Several events and conferences on environmental and sustainability management have been organized in the last decades. If on the one hand, this has a huge importance for spreading knowledge on sustainability and in engaging companies and organizations towards a more sustainable production and manufacturing, on the other hand, these conferences or events can cause lots of environmental impacts. In fact, they bring together hundreds of participants from every part of the world to the same location and food, drinks, transport and all services have to be guaranteed for 3-4 days. That means lots of resources and energy use and consequent emissions in air, soil and water. The question is: shouldn’t a conference on sustainability be sustainable and what does that entail in terms of carbon neutrality? A case study, the Life Cycle Management conference (LCM), is presented here to show some figures on the environmental impacts created by a sustainability event/conference and relative offsetting that can be done. The LCM is a leading forum worldwide in life cycle sustainability and circular economy, bringing together 600+ scholars and practitioners from 40+ countries working in the domain. It takes place once every two years and as is the case with the delivery of events, each LCM results in environmental and socio-economic impacts.