Ten steps towards a sustainable conference
1. Choose a conference venue, such as Tampere Hall, which has a sustainability programme
and is located in the city centre within a walking distance from the conference hotels and
social events.
2. Several hotels in Tampere are certified with Nordic Ecolabel
green font in the registration form.
. Mark these hotels with a
3. Tap water in Finland has been found to be significantly purer than bottled drinking water.
Encourage participants to drink fresh tap water. You can hand out reusable water bottles
on the conference site.
4. Give priority to locally grown, organic and low processed food in the lunch and dinner
menus. Participants can minimize the CO2 emissions also by choosing the vegetarian menu
in the registration form.
5. Kindly ask participants to register for social events and study visits as well as to cancel in
case they are not able to attend in order to avoid food waste.
6. The City of Tampere was the first in Finland to be awarded the status of Fair trade City in
2008. Serve fair trade tea and coffee during the coffee breaks at the conference site.
Choose fair trade wines for dinners.
7. Choose conference bags which are made of recycled materials.
8. The participants can lower the CO2 emissions by reading the final programme, abstracts
and proceedings in electronic format only. Make this choice available in your registration
form.
9. Use reusable name tags made of recycled material.
10. Choose local subcontractors to avoid unnecessary traffic and transportation. In addition to
locally produced food, choose local materials and hire local congress professionals, artists
and musicians.
These steps have been written in co-operation with Tampere Hall and the 2013 International
Metropolis Conference.