Reducing our environmental impact
With more than 200 expected attendees, the EARSeL workshop is a medium scale event and will likely have only a moderate environmental impact. Still, we can try to minimize our footprint with regard to travelling to and in Potsdam, accommodation, catering, venue, information media, badges, signage, printed programmes, welcome bags and other items or activities related to this workshop. This webpage provides some information on our green initiatives that we hope will allow us to achieve more sustainably.
We strongly encourage all attendees to help reduce the environmental impact of their participation by considering the following:
- travelling by train, bus, metro, or bicycle to and in Potsdam whenever possible,
- bringing a reusable water bottle (and coffee-to-go cup),
- avoiding printing programmes but checking the workshop information online instead. A small paper programme book will be provided to all participants during the on-site registration
Travelling
- We encourage participants to travel by train to Potsdam whenever possible. Berlin main station is only a 30 minute train ride from the venue, within reach from Hamburg in < 2 h, Frankfurt (Main) < 4 h, Munich 4.5 h and Prague 4 h.
- Several night trains connect Berlin with major cities in Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, (Italy), Switzerland and France. Furthermore, there are night trains to Berlin from Budapest/Bratislava (MAV-START) and Moskau/Minsk/Warschau as well as Paris (RZD) though not every day.
- Within Potsdam most places are in easy reach by local public transportation (efficient tram and bus system), bike (also for rent) or by foot.
- Please take a look at our travel guide section for more detailed information on travelling to and in Potsdam.
Catering
- Did you know that the tap water in Germany is often of higher quality that most bottled products? Bring your own reusable water bottle and try it yourself.
- Coffee and tea at the workshop will be served in reusable cups; however, we encourage participants to bring their own multi-use coffee mugs for their coffee(s) to go (e.g. for travelling to, in, and from Potsdam).
- To benefit from existing infrastructure, avoid resource intense transportation and reduce participation fees we will make use of the local student restaurant for lunch and coffee breaks. We strongly encourage our on-site catering partner to offer more selections of seasonal vegetarian and vegan food.
- Food served at the icebreaker will be vegetarian and vegan.
- We base our decisions for catering partners also on their efforts to reduce packaging waste to a minimum.
Material
- We will offer a printed paper programme book, however, reduced to essential information (workshop schedule overview, session schedule overview, overview maps of venue sites). This will be printed with water colours on 100% FSC or recycled paper. All other information will be available online.
- Name badges will consist of 100% FSC or recycled paper, printed with water colours (no lanyards).
- There will be no welcome gift bags, sorry! However, a number of notebooks and pens (both from sustainable sources) will be available to those who require them.
- We attempt to avoid printed advertisements but will offer digital displays instead.
Initiatives by the University of Potsdam (our host)
The university of Potsdam published a climate-protection concept in January 2020 listing > 80 activities to reduce carbon emissions with regard to real estate (electricity and heating), mobility, education, acquisition and disposal, Green IT, and food consumption (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/umweltportal/klimaschutzkonzept.html, currently in German only)
Feedback
We warmly welcome feedback and suggestions on how we can further improve and reduce the environmental impact of the 12th EARSeL SIG imaging spectroscopy workshop (earsel21@gfz-potsdam.de).