Managing our environmental impact was a core pillar of the World Congress of Soil Science. As an environmental charity, with members who understand the importance of environmental sustainability, we were clear throughout the Congress’ development that consideration of our impacts and how they could be reduced and mitigated, would be a priority.
Although Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are common for many of the projects our members work on, we believe that the EIA we commissioned for the World Congress, was the first ever on an international Congress. The assessment, which was undertaken by Alexandre Couvez, a talented Masters’ researcher from Cranfield University, is being considered for publication and we hope it will be available to read in early 2023.
In conjunction with the EIA, we knew that we needed to reduce our impact as far as possible, only moving to mitigation where this was not possible. This extended to all aspects of our activities: from considering our caterers’ supply chains and how locally the food was produced, to limiting the amount of carpet used in the exhibition hall and providing hybrid attendance options.
However, there were major challenges which thwarted our effort including recyclable and compostable packaging provided but where local recycling facilities were not available, and a lack of industry-agreed methods for reporting data.
As a result, we felt it was important to highlight our findings in a practical way to other event organisers.
The work the British Society of Soil Science has done to highlight environmental impacts of events has been well received, with the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) co-branding our recommendations to support event organisers, the wider industry and governments in making sustainable choices.
Over the coming months and years, we will continue to promote these recommendations set out within the EIA and in our supporting document. The EIA set a baseline for the World Congress and other international events, although we won’t host another World Congress in the foreseeable future, we can continue to affect positive change by ensuring our other activities follow the same principles.
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Delivering sustainable events is available via the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS) website.
Sarah Garry and Alexandre Couvez will be presenting at the ICCA Congress 2022 on Tuesday 8 November 2022.
BSSS has committed to be a ‘carbon positive’ organisation by 2030. Whilst we agree how to make these changes in an effective and sustainable way, we will be offsetting the carbon from our flights via Ecologi.
