“Our house is burning and we can't look the other way! ”Adaptation of the famous sentence uttered by Jacques CHIRAC, President of the French Republic during the IV Earth Summit, in 2002.You are convinced that the implementation of a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policy requires undertaking major projects to adopt an effective sustainable development policy. However, you can easily reduce your impact on the environment by adopting simple actions, especially in the event sector. Discover below how an online event can address certain CSR issues.
How do physical events impact the environment?
Physical events often generate very positive impacts on the participants of trade shows, general meetings, team-building, seminars, etc. But they also represent high environmental impacts that can no longer be ignored today. Indeed, organizing a physical event generates a high carbon footprint. Here are the different aspects of a physical event that increase the addition of its carbon footprint:
- The movement of participants (plane, car, public transport, etc.), by far the first factor in generating CO2,
- Accommodation,
- The consumption of energy at the site of the event, which results in greenhouse gas emissions (electricity: heating or air conditioning), water, stands, kakemono, waste, etc.
- On-site catering,
- Communication materials to promote your event: invitation cards, posters, etc.
To find out the impact of organizing an event on the environment, use the calculation tool ADERE. You will discover the carbon consumption of your event and will be able to reduce it thanks to proposals made by ADERE.How to be more environmentally friendly during a physical event?Several axes can be considered:
- Use eco-friendly materials for furniture,
- Choose a location that is accessible by public transport and encourage carpooling,
- Use digital communication media instead of paper or use recycled paper,
- Choose a local caterer for catering and seasonal products,
- Use recyclable tableware,
- Opt for the selective sorting of your waste.
How do digital events respond to the challenges of sustainable development?
The balance sheet is clear. The carbon consumption of a physical living room compared to a online event is much higher. Let's take an example from a study by Houston & Reay (2011) with 264 participants, of which 15% of passengers take a long-haul flight and 60% a short-haul flight.
- Physical event: 282 tons of CO2 (accommodation, travel, waste, etc.)
- Virtual event: 1 ton of CO2 (electricity, devices and audio and video transfers)
It is therefore essential to raise awareness among the various stakeholders in order to show the value of an online event versus a physical event in terms of eco-responsibility. To unite your teams and the participants in your online event, you will need to explain your environmental approach to your employees, to your customers, etc.
Voilà supports you in your CSR initiatives
Your company may already have included a CSR approach in its governance policy, but not yet in its event policy.At There you go, we are passionate about events, but also about the environment. The essence of our activity is part of a CSR approach and we have been part of an eco-responsible approach since our beginnings.A bit of techniqueThe particularity of an online event is to present very intense peaks in network and server load in a very short time. It is also difficult to predict the exact number of participants. Based on these observations, Voilà uses specific cloud modalities such as “Function as a Service”, “serverless”, “lambda” and “columns” .These very technical concepts 😉 illustrate Voilà's desire to invest in the latest technologies to limit its carbon footprint. These modalities in fact offer a very fast capacity for ascent or descent under load. Thus, we do not have a server that is left unused at one time. Compared to a more traditional approach, our carbon footprint has been divided by almost 40.In addition, our platform is mainly based on the services of AWS (Amazon Web Services), which is very committed to the topics of corporate sustainability.AWS ecological commitments:
- Use of 100% renewable energy by 2025,
- Zero carbon in 2040.
In the end, at Voilà, we estimate that the participant who attends a conference via our platform generates less than 40 g of CO2 per hour.
Conclusion
To conclude, as you have just discovered, when it comes to carbon balance, between a physical event and an online event, there is no photo! And then other formats can be imagined to combine the best of both worlds. Since travel represents the majority of CO2 generation, multi-site formats supported by a platform like Voilà can be imagined.Would you like to be a more environmentally friendly company by organizing eco-responsible events?Request a demo
