Green Events
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A green event integrates environmental considerations into your event planning to reduce the negative impacts on our limited resources. Please consider making your next on-campus event Green!
Green events take just a little more thought and planning. To help you, we designed a checklist to guide your planning process.
Every event is unique. While not all criteria below may be relevant to you, please see how far you can go to host a green event.
We ask that you take the following into consideration when planning your event:
- Food & Beverage:
- Request an RSVP to better estimate the actual number of attendees to diminish food waste
- Choose vegetarian and vegan options to reduce the amount of meat served
- Order seasonal and local foods
- Order fair-trade and organic coffees, teas and chocolates
- Buffet style serving and no individual packets of chips, condiments, etc.
- Encourage attendees to bring their own utensils, mugs and/or water bottles
- Arrange to have leftover, unserved food donated to or to students
- Composting:
- Use compostable cups and plates (avoid plastic), or better yet, use reusable serving ware
- Ensure all staff are trained on proper disposal of recyclables and compostables
- Ensure you have bins for all three waste streams (compost, recycling and trash) at your event
- Communications
- Print less/no flyers. Instead, use SMC's Event page, digital signs, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms to advertise for your event
- Distribute agendas and handouts electronically before the event
- Print double-sided on recycled paper with narrow margins
- Use whiteboards rather than paper flip charts
- Ask for feedback on your efforts at greening the event
- Transportation
- Make video ore tele-conferencing available
- Encourage public transit use
Please contact SMC Sustainability at smcsustainability@stmarys-ca.edu if you have questions on greening your on-campus events.