EVENT GREENING FORUM
Event Greening
Q&As
Many interesting questions were raised at the Event Greening Forum’s (EGF) 2019 Conference on 11 July at Maropeng. Here are some of them, with answers and additional resources.
Shouldn’t we be encouraging plant-based eating at events? Meat agriculture produces more methane than food waste and uses huge amounts of water. Plants are compostable; meat isn’t. In a nutshell – yes. Livestock production is responsible for approximately 14.5 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Serving a plantbased menu at your event should help to lower its carbon footprint. Briefly, the reasons for this are: • Animal agriculture requires large areas of land, which has driven rapid deforestation. • Animal’s produce greenhouse gas emissions – their farts and burps contain methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Ruminants like cows and lamb are the worst offenders. • Natural and synthetic fertilisers release nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. • Farm waste run-off (such as manure) ends up in rivers and the sea, causing dead zones which release methane Additionally, animal products need large volumes of water and are a less efficient
Extra resources
way of feeding people of Humankind) to create Take this quiz to test your knowledge on compared to crops. In very a plant-based menu and which foods have a lower then adding a few meat simple terms, one field of carbon footprint: http:// crops can feed many more and dairy options to it. This eatlowcarbon.org/ people than if a field of crops way we felt we could satisfy take-the-quiz/ is used to feed a cow, which everyone while keeping our is then fed to fewer people. carbon footprint relatively minimal. The above concerns don’t only We also confirmed that the venue sources apply to meat production, but also almost all food from local farms. to dairy and egg production. Other ways to be more sustainable However – the food we consume include swapping out foods for touches on our cultural heritage, ‘greener’ alternatives (e.g. serving religion, biology and preferences. free range chicken instead of beef), Therefore it’s important to be sensitive or communicating with attendees to these factors and not simply force a about the benefits of a plant-based specific diet on your event attendees. menu to get their agreement to have Another aspect of this debate to keep at least one vegan meal during an in mind is that not all plant-based menus event. It’s important to also make are equal. Fruit and vegetables that are an effort to reduce food waste. grown on the other side of the world by exploited farm workers who use harmful What can guests do to pesticides, for example, could arguably be calculate and reduce their a more harmful alternative than serving carbon footprint from travel locally and responsibly farmed meat. (flights) to and from events? For the EGF 2019 Conference we had How do we help guests a number of discussions about how we reduce this? could create a sustainable menu that Event attendees can have a huge everyone would enjoy. We ended up impact on the event’s carbon footprint, asking the venue (Maropeng, the Cradle so it’s a great idea to educate them
38 Business Events Africa September 2019
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