Greening the European Public Health conferences – The Green Club

Abstract

Abstract EUPHA members prepared a discussion paper on EUPHA’s “health and environment awareness” in 2015, presented it to the EUPHA section council, and conducted a workshop at the European Public Health (EPH) conference in Vienna 2016. Following this initiative, the Association determined that greening the conferences is one of the objectives for the EPH Conference strategy for 2017-2020. A “Green club” was set up by the Executive director in 2017. For reducing the environmental impact of the conference, the following were some of the early objectives and actions (2016): Catering - Coffee and tea served in recycled cups; most lunch ingredients from regional and organic origin. Reduced printing - Switching to E-Posters, digital marketing and email communication. Paperless communication - Abstract submission, registration and invoicing became fully web-based; the Conference Programme and abstracts could henceforth be accessed online. The Conference Bag was made of recycled materials. With the EPH conferences in Stockholm 2017 and Ljubljana 2018, advised by the Green Club, the following initiatives were taken: Lunches and Conference Dinner no longer served beef; vegan and vegetarian menus were introduced. Reduced printing - By 2018, the option to have a hard copy of the list of delegates was no longer offered. The conference Foundation encouraged its suppliers to limit the environmental impact of their products and services. In Stockholm, all restaurants at the venue were licensed to use the Nordic Ecolabel. All delegates and participants were encouraged to travel CO2 neutral. For Ljubljana in 2018, the Green club consulted the WHO Europe publication “Planning Healthy and Sustainable Meetings” and considered initiatives that participants could do for compensating their environmental impact. For the 2019 conference, discussions are intended to involve a wider conference participation.