What is the guide for?
Royal Holloway Students’ Union supports 100+ societies and 35+ sports clubs. These student-led groups successfully plan hundreds of events a year. This guide is designed to help student groups be conscious of their carbon footprint and boost their environmental sustainability, with the focus on planning events that reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas production.
Why is this important?
- Environmental sustainability can be defined as choices that consider the future of mankind to co-exist on this planet safely.
- Carbon footprint can be defined as the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of our activities.
- Greenhouse gases have far-ranging environmental and health effects. They cause climate change by trapping heat in the atmosphere. This causes extreme weather, air pollution and species extinction.
This resource will give committee members the opportunity to be more carbon literate and to act on that knowledge by altering the way they organise events. Being eco-friendly does not have to be expensive – in fact it can be cheaper in the long-term!
Whilst carbon footprint is the focus of this guide, there are other benefits for student groups who wish to focus on environmental sustainability. For example, at its core, sustainable event planning is about producing less waste. This means waste management also becomes easier and less complicated. Further, student groups that are eco-friendly will create positive brand awareness and attract more members. This is due to the positive environmentally conscious nature of this generation.
This guide offers support on how to become more environmentally sustainable as a student group, particularly in relation to event planning. This is by no means a comprehensive resource, but rather an inspiration to continue developing environmental sustainability in practice!
