Green Learning: Designing Sustainable Training Events
Want to make sure your workshops are as environmentally friendly as possible?
Jackafal is here with some handy tips on how to really make a difference (no green-washing or impractical advice here!).
Being eco-conscious is a classic example of ‘not my problem’ for a lot of trainers - they consider it important, but don’t feel like they have the power to do very much about it. But we’re here to tell you that they’re wrong! There are a number of simple things you can do (or avoid) to make your training event more consciously sustainable, and we’ve summed it up in a handy list of dos (and one don’t) below:
Do: Cut down on paper
Who hasn’t been to a workshop or event where the room is littered with discarded paper at the end of the day (which all ultimately ends up in the bin)? As well as being a waste of time and money, it’s a waste of paper and ink, which is not great for the environment. It’s important to do your best to minimise paper, while making sure the practicalities of optimising learning are kept in mind.
However, reducing paper at your events doesn’t have to mean entirely getting rid of it. There may be some delegates who find staring at a screen all day difficult, or people with neurodiversity who need to make notes on the material beforehand to help their understanding. Or in some cases, perhaps your delegates won’t have their devices during the session for security reasons. You can provide paper copies for what your delegates need now and won’t benefit from in an electronic form, and make the rest digital.
Our tip: Email attendees in advance explaining that you will not be printing paper copies of materials for environmental reasons unless requested. Then you can allow delegates to ‘opt-in’ if a paper copy is necessary, or print their own at home.
Do: Consider going virtual
In-person training events can be particularly travel-intensive: as well as gathering everybody who needs the training in one place, you’ll also potentially be shipping in a trainer from further afield, and the carbon footprint soon tots up. But the pandemic has changed the way we live, work and interact with the world, and the options to run virtual events are more extensive than ever.
Of course, there can be benefits to having people at an event in person, and meeting someone face-to-face is an experience that can’t be fully replicated at a virtual training event (especially for practical skills training). But not every event requires this. When you’re considering your cost-benefit analysis for running your training event, remember to consider the environmental cost as an element of your planning.
Our tip: Where a face-to-face element is important in your event, still consider whether it could be run as a hybrid event instead, or even in smaller groups closer to home - you could even use teleconferencing software for the trainer to deliver to several groups simultaneously, who can work together face-to-face.
Do: Integrate the ‘campsite rule’ into your content
While having a section on environmentalism is not going to be suitable for the content of every event, the ethos of environmentalism is suitable for the vast majority of material, and is a great way to implicitly boost environmentalism in your organisation. The ‘campsite rule’ of taking responsibility to leave an environment or situation better than you found it is invaluable in many fields of work, and centering it in your content may lead to a boost of employees taking ownership for their workplace and surroundings.
Our tip: In any group activities and exercises, emphasise the importance of leaving the people in your group, and the space you’re in, better than when you found it. If it’s relevant to the session, you can expand on this to include explicit reference to environmental issues.
Don’t: Just carbon offset
Carbon offsetting is a tricky topic, because it can sometimes be a positive thing, but it isn’t always a guarantee. There are lots of intricacies to getting the right scheme, making sure it actually has an impact, and ensuring that the whole thing doesn’t appear to be (or actually turn into) greenwashing.
If you’re running an event and your only sustainability plan is to ‘carbon offset’, you run the risk of both not achieving what you’ve set out to, and appearing tokenistic to your attendees. However, if you are considering carbon offsetting responsibly as part of a wider sustainability plan, it can be a positive thing. Just carbon offsetting as a catch-all solution may not cut it, but planning it carefully and pairing it with other initiatives could be a beneficial thing.
Our tip: If you’re going to carbon offset in any capacity, be 100% sure of why you’re doing it, why you’ve picked the scheme you have (here’s a handy guide for what to look for), and explain why that was your choice to attendees.
If you are interested to consider more about how to arrange training events ethically and responsibly, why not get in touch with us for a free consultation? We always love to chat to new people, and we’d be happy to talk to you about your learning & development and EDI needs.
