EAVE Green Policy

EAVE has reviewed all its processes and practices, identified improvements, and defined concrete actions to reach its sustainability goals. These actions will affect the daily operations of its staff, the pedagogical team and guest experts, as well as workshop participants; it also will have an impact on the choice of EAVE's providers such as hotels and restaurants as well as event destinations.

Green policy related to workshops

Organising workshops is EAVE’s core activity, and we have taken a careful look at all practices related to the preparation of workshops and workshop materials, daily functions at workshop locations as well as travel arrangements to and from workshops.

The concrete actions for immediate implementation include:

• All principles of our green policy will be reflected in our supplier and accommodation choices.
• We negotiate with workshop hotels to avoid plastic cups and bottles as well as other single-use products.
• We negotiate with workshop hotels to set-up proper recycling systems for our needs.
• We stop producing unnecessary materials, such as badges and lanyards, and replace printed workshop materials with digital versions.
• We ship only absolutely necessary materials and equipment from the office to the workshop location, and look into the possibilities of borrowing, renting or purchasing locally.
• On average we offer a maximum of two meals with meat per week.
• We offer regional and seasonal food if possible. We look into possibilities of partnering with suitable local food providers.
• When choosing restaurants outside the partner hotel, we prioritize venues that can be reached by walking or public transport.
• We consider the possibility of some guest experts delivering their workshop sessions virtually instead of traveling to the workshop location.

Green policy related to travel

There is significant travel included in the work of EAVE’s team and experts. In addition to travelling to different workshop locations around Europe, we participate at festivals and other industry events as well as different meetings.

Since the core of our mission is to bring producers and industry professional together from across the globe to form long-term working relationships, travel cannot be avoided.  However, the nature of the extensive EAVE network as well as the availability of large numbers of experts and decision makers in one location during the workshops, reduces the need for 'single-purpose' and 'single-project' future business travel substantially. 

To reduce the negative impact of travel, we have identified the following concrete actions:

• We avoid unnecessary travel and organise meetings online when it makes sense.
• We book train tickets instead of flights for any travel that can be made via train in 6 hours or less.
• When organising any gatherings such as meetings, we look for a location that is reachable by train for the maximum number of attendees.
• When flights are needed, the CO2 emissions should be compensated.
• When choosing hotels, we give priority to choices at walking distance from the festival/event/meeting location.
• When choosing restaurants, we give priority to choices at walking distance from the festival/event/meeting location or hotel.
• We prioritise public transport between the train station/airport and hotel, or organize group transportation instead of individual cars.

Green policy for daily office practices

The changes to our everyday actions follow the principles of reducing resource and energy usage, as well as waste production.

The concrete actions for immediate implementation include:

• We commit to the use of environmentally friendly technologies and materials and prioritize products made from recycled material. These aspects shall also be reflected in our supplier choices. 
• We buy all needed new equipment and office materials from local shops instead of online retailers, whenever possible.
• We avoid all unnecessary printing.
• We replace all printed promotional publications with digital versions.
• We avoid in all situations plastic cups, bottles and other single-use products.
• We improve further the recycling practices in the office by organising it in a way that forces both team and visitors to pay attention to recycling instead of functioning automatically.
• When leaving the office, we make sure all lights are turned off and that, during the cold months, the heaters are on the minimum heating position during nights and weekends.
• We unplug electronics before leaving for the weekend, whenever possible.
• We aim to use more responsible search engines.
• We will switch to an online application system that reduces the number of emails with heavy attachments
• We follow this email etiquette:
  • Avoid large attachments, when possible.      
  • Use file transfer platforms instead of email attachments, when it makes sense.
  • Regularly delete old emails; especially those with large attachments.
  • Empty your spam and trash folders regularly.
  • Unsubscribe from newsletters that you never read.
  • Turn off notification emails from social media, unless you really need them.
• We make further improvement of green practices a recurrent topic in team meetings, in order to nourish continuing exchange and evolvement.
• We encourage feedback and new propositions from our network and partners.

We are investigating how to continuously measure our carbon footprint in order to further reduce it.

Page last updated 6 March 2023