The United Nations Observes World Environment Day and World Oceans Day in June

June was certainly an exciting month for sustainability as the United Nations observed two international days that have a direct connection to the events industry: World Environment Day and World Oceans Day.

World Environment Day, held June 5, is the United Nations’ most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. This year’s theme was connecting people to nature.

How Nature Helps Improve Events

Nature can be a play an important role in making events more engaging, energizing and effective. Exposure to nature can help to:

• Make events more memorable: A University of Michigan study found that short-term memory is improved 20 percent by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene.
• Improve creativity and problem solving: Face-to-face meetings can leverage nature to improve creativity. In fact, immersion in nature has been shown to improve creativity for solving problems.
• Boost mental energy: Even with great content, dynamic conversations and exciting entertainment, a full day of event programming can leave participants needing an extra boost of energy. Natural environments turn out to be particularly restorative.

Connecting Events with Nature

Connecting our event participants is easy, healthy and effective for achieving event goals. Here are three easy ways that you can help your event participants connect with nature:

• Go outside! It's really that simple. Select venues that have outdoor areas that you can use for part of your program (with a backup for inclement weather).
• Restore your participants, and nature.There are many great community service project ideas that support the environment and habitat restoration that can be incorporated as team-building activities for your next event.
• Pull the curtains open. Look for meeting spaces with natural lighting and great views. Remember: participants want to have a "sense of place".

Coordinated and promoted internationally by The Ocean Project since 2002, World Oceans Day, which was held June 8, provided a call for ocean conservation action that will be sustainable throughout the year.

Why do oceans matter?

Oceans are awe-inspiring marvels. In case you're looking for the hard facts on why we need to protect our oceans, let's look at some of the ways that we depend on them.

• We harvest 200 billion pounds of fish and shellfish from the oceans each year.
• 70 percent of the world's oxygen is produced by marine plants.
• Currently, 48 percent of the carbon emitted to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is sequestered into the ocean.
• Ocean-based businesses contribute more than $500 billion to the world’s economy.

How Can Meetings and Events Contribute to Healthier Oceans?

There are many ways that meetings and events can support oceans through responsible purchasing and community service. Three specific areas of focus for our industry are:

• Reduce the use of plastics: Scientists estimate that more than 8 million metric tons of plastic is entering our ocean every year. As meeting professionals, we can commit to eliminating (or significantly reducing) the use of plastics, especially single-use items and to recycling or repurposing plastics after our events.
• Source sustainable seafood: Seafood can be a great, healthy choice for event menus, but sourcing sustainable options can be tricky. There are many complex factors, from environmental impact, work force conditions, stock levels and transportation to consider. Fortunately, there are great resources to help you make the right choice. These include: Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program, Ocean Wise Seafood Program, Marine Stewardship Council's Sustainable Seafood Product Finder and the World Wildlife Fund's Sustainable Seafood Guides (by country).
• Support cleanup efforts: Consider adding a beachfront clean-up to your next event as a community service project or as a staff team building activity. Every year during Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup®, hundreds of thousands of volunteers comb lakes, rivers and beaches around the world for trash. The 2017 International Coastal Cleanup will take place on September 16, 2017.

Mariela McIlwraith, CMP, CMM, MBA
Director of Sustainability, Events Industry Council