Before your event
Sustainable Events
In terms of making your event more sustainable, think about transport, energy and water use, waste reduction, and where and what you buy.
Green Events
Remember the ad about keeping NZ beautiful, or at least the retro T-shirt? Take into consideration where your products are coming from and what’s happening with your rubbish. Have a read through our checklist and get in contact with UC Sustainability for more info.
What are your Goals for this Event?
Before you start planning, think about what your goals could be for this event.
Ideas include – energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste minimisation, recycling and composting, sourcing local and sustainable products, and minimising transport emissions.
Before the Event
- Does you club already have an environmental policy? Use it! Or make one.
- How can you get your attendees to pay attention to your ingenious ideas?
- How are you going to measure your greenie initiatives? You might as well measure it if you’re going to do it. (e.g. counting number of people arriving via bus vs cars).
- Will your volunteers/exec need any additional training to get your ingenious ideas off the ground? Most likely yes, talk with UC sustainability and UCSA.
- What is the venue’s view on your initiative? Are they on board, and can they help?
- Have you told all your contractors what your initiatives are? Do your suppliers have an environmental policy?
- Can you get to your venue by other methods of transport? Offer carpooling/buses, shuttles.
- How are you going to advertise your awesome initiatives?
- Talk with UC Sustainability to see what is recyclable and to source bins (and know how to use them correctly).
At the Event
- Tell your attendees about this initiative with clearly labelled signs, announcements, and volunteers.
- Collect data and measure it – you may need another volunteer or rope in security to help.
- Bins marked clearly. Put them where they will be seen, and used.
After the Event
- Evaluate collected data.
- Let EVERYONE know what you achieved.
- Provide some feedback to the venue and contractors.
- Make sure waste has been disposed of correctly.
- Consider giving unused items to charity or storing them for next time.
You can get more info and a full events checklist from UC Sustainability. www.sustain.canterbury.ac.nz/
During your event
After Your Event
Money:
- Have you handed all receipts and info over to the treasurer?
- Did you receive any grant monies? Have you completed the grant receipt form?
- Have you broken even or maybe even made a profit? Make sure any cash profits are banked and keep a record for transparency.
Report back:
- Have a debrief with the executive.
- What worked, what didn’t, what could you have improved on?
- Do you need to prepare a report for the UCSA, any sponsors, UC, or anyone else you worked with?
- Prep thank-you
Thank Yous:
- Make sure you take the time to thank the people who actually helped you. Personally tailor these thank yous to the company or organisation or even the individual humans who helped you out!