Lower the environmental footprint of meetings and events in the city.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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Adopt a policy or adopt practices for meetings and events hosted by city government addressing issues such as solid waste generated (e.g., paperless city council packets; electronic permitting), transit/carpooling to meetings/events, hosting at buildings with EV chargers. This could include distributing educational materials about holding a no-waste event for use at city-supported events such as National Night Out / Night to Unite. Report broader multi-topic educational material distributed at events under action 24.4 |
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Have a policy for meetings and events taking place on city property, including parks and libraries: include required use of reusable, recyclable, or compostable food service items, prohibit the use of single-use bottled water, and specify the purchase of lower impact food and beverage items (e.g. organic, local, bulk foods). |
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Work with at least the largest private venue in the city (such as a conference center) to cut waste generation by at least 1/3, to increase recycling by at least 1/3, to install publicly available EV chargers (powered by solar carports); adopt internal departmental carbon fees. |
Resources
- The MPCA green meetings page provides extensive guidance, checklists, case studies and directories in the areas of food, venue, waste and recycling, waste reduction, resource and energy use, travel and transportation, and construction and deconstruction.
- For example, in Duluth, just about every event at a community hall, public place, park or business with 100 or more guests is required to have recycling bins available alongside garbage cans. And in the Three Rivers Park District in Hennepin County, specific zero waste practices are required for those renting designated facilities.
- A related but vastly more powerful 'footprint-lowering' policy is internal carbon fees whereby city operations (vehicle fleet, buildings, drinking water plant, etc.) pay into a city energy-efficiency fund the carbon cost of their emissions, and each operation also pays lower fees when they cut emissions.
Order Number
7
Action Type
Finite