Sustainable meetings
An investment in the future
Piles of paper, huge amounts of plastic waste, and traffic jams outside the trade-fair centre used to follow right in the wake of a conference. Those days are strictly a thing of the past here in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Piles of paper, huge amounts of plastic waste, and traffic jams outside the trade-fair centre used to follow right in the wake of a conference. Those days are strictly a thing of the past here in North Rhine-Westphalia. After all, the MICE industry has been acknowledging its social responsibility for years. It is focusing increasingly on sustainability when organising trade fairs, congresses, and conferences, cultural or sporting events. Most of the venues in the state, no matter their size, with the Eurogress Aachen among them, have signed the sustainability code of the German-speaking event industry. They feel beholden to the environment and society, in management as well as in their economic, ecological, and social actions.
The Eurogress Aachen was one of the very first congress centres in Germany to be awarded the Green Globe certificate of the Europäischer Verband der Veranstaltungscentren e.V. (EVVC) for its extensive environmental protection measures. The conference centre located in adjacent to Aachen’s city park, represents the large number of big event venues and small event locations in NRW that have invested in energy-saving air-conditioning and lighting systems while developing innovative concepts for waste avoidance in the last few years. They cooperate with local and regional service providers for catering and rely on environmentally friendly mobility concepts. The central location and tightly meshed rail network covering the state enable conference participants and event visitors to travel comfortably by public transport, greatly reducing overall CO2 emissions.
Tourismus NRW has produced short e-learning videos (in German) on the subjects of management, economy, resource consumption, procurement & waste management, mobility & accommodation, and social matters in order to motivate even more businesses to act more sustainably and in the interest of future generations. They explain simply and clearly how every company can take steps and responsibility to improve environmental and climate protection.