The European Respiratory Society has announced that the official themes for their 2023 international congress (this year held in Milan from 9-13th September) are "Pollution, climate change and sustainable developments". You can read more, and look at the full programme, here: https://www.ersnet.org/congress-and-events/congress/ers-international-c…
The co-chairs of the congress explain that "Pollution, climate change and sustainable developments should be priority points on everyone’s agenda", and they have "tried to orient the entire programme towards environmental issues more cross-sectionally through the different sessions." It's great to see that sustainable respiratory care is now such a mainstream topic, and is being prioritised by Europe's largest respiratory medicine organisation. But how do we balance that against the travel (there is no online option for this year's conference) resources and waste involved in such an event?
We'd love to hear from anyone who has attended a conference which prioritised sustainability in some way - what worked, what didn't, and why?
I work in Sydney, Australia and recently went to a conference in Brisbane. The University of Queensland (who hosted it), have a sustainable events guide (https://sustainability.uq.edu.au/files/7826/SustEventsGde.pdf) - it made for a conference which really thought about sustainability (although it had to be, as the conference was Doctors for the Environment Australia!)
This guide is brilliant! Thank you so much for sharing. Would you mind if we shared this on the general and education themed networks as well?
Go for it!
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