Conference Sustainability

Waste Diversion Rates from the 2011 Conference Now Available!

Please click here to learn more about the 97% diversion rate of all waste at the conference, from expo hall, to meeting space, to ballroom use, to food and water waste!

AASHE would like to acknowledge GLAD as the official waste diversion sponsor of the conference, and Waste Management, for their support in recycling efforts onsite.

The 2012 AASHE Conference Moves Toward One Bag with the Help of the Glad Products Company

In October, the 2012 AASHE Conference wrapped a successful four days of sessions and meetings on how to achieve sustainability in higher education, while also achieving a sustainability success of its own. With the support of its official waste diversion sponsor The Glad Products Company, they met a 97.63% percent diversion rate, meaning less than 3% of the total conference’s accumulated waste was sent to the landfill!

The conference was one of the first events to participate in Glad’s new One Bag campaign. The effort encourages and facilitates events, venues and consumers to host One Bag events, where only one bag of waste is sent to landfill, with the remainder being diverted to compost and recycling.

So what did this take? Not only did it require recycling and composting waste diversion capabilities at the venue, but the AASHE and Glad teams worked with the event planners to ensure they were wasting less at every step along the way. This included removing “waste drivers” from the event’s menu (nixing wrapped candy and chips from lunch boxes), using compostable or reusable silverware, donating leftover boxed lunches to a local non-profit and displaying informational signage by waste receptacles.

The GLAD® “One Bag" grant program will award up to 10 - $3,500 grants to colleges that are active members of AASHE looking to further their waste reduction efforts. The Glad to Waste Less campaign and “One Bag” grant program is intended help move more football programs towards less waste, supporting AASHE's campus sustainability goals. Click here for Official Rules and complete details.
You can learn how you can host a One Bag event at www.GladtoWasteLess.com.

Food donations

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Partnering with Levy Restaurants at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, AASHE offered local, fair trade and vegan options for every meal and reusable china or compostable packaging when china was not an option.

Above and beyond the food composting and waste diversion rates, 1,513lbs of food from the conference was donated to the Jubilee Soup Kitchen in Pittsburgh.

The Jubilee Association welcomes those whose lives are challenged by poverty, illness, joblessness, or homelessness by:

  • Serving hot noon day meals to guests , 365 days a year
  • Forming a community between those who serve and are served
  • Serving as a conduit to those who need with those who have and want to share

Carbon Offsets

  • AASHE 2011 is an official Carbon Balanced Event, powered by EarthEra. This event will have a reduced carbon footprint through the retirement of renewable energy credits for the facility space, attendee travel and hotel rooms. EarthEra directs 100% of program revenue to the EarthEra Renewable Energy Trust to build new renewable energy facilities in the United States. With EarthEra, 100% of the revenue from the Carbon Balanced Event Program will be used to create new renewable energy projects in the United States
  • Working with NextEra as a dedicated Carbon Offset Sponsor to create a partnership focusing on mitigating emissions created from attendee and vendor travel and event center usage

Additional Greening

  • Offering guidebook, an mobile application that will provide all the information of the printed program and helping the process of moving away from a printed program in upcoming years
  • Offering a Ride Share program through Zimride to all attendees traveling by car
  • Partnering with local hotels who offer sustainability highlights including onsite recycling and rewards programs for those who chose to skip laundering services
  • Attendees have been active in pledging to bring their own coffee mug, water container, pens and paper, and re-sourced event lanyard so as not to create event related material waste
  • Utilizing EPEAT Gold Standard computers in all concurrent, general sessions, registration and computer stations.
  • Offering hydration stations throughout the conference and eliminating the use of plastic/disposable bottled water
  • Controlling room temperatures and energy output from light sources in conjunction with the Convention Center and AV company partnerships
  • Partnering with Stetson, a General Service Contractor for the Exhibit Hall, whose business plan focuses on sustainability measures from supply chains to onsite material usage
  • Creating local transportation options such as walking and biking routes, and promoting use of hybrid taxi’s and local hybrid bus solutions for getting around Pittsburgh
  • Working with local restaurants to offer a local and sustainable dine-around option for attendees.
  • Creating signage that will be reused for future conference