CASE STUDY: Eco-friendly event “Meta Boost Guide to Green Conference”

Itʼs not a secret that more and more clients are paying close attention to an environmentally sustainable mindset when organising an event. In fact, just recently at the beginning of November, the Baltic Travel Group helped organise a conference right in the heart of Tallinn for Meta in cooperation with AmCham Estonia and Rohetiiger. The event was called “Meta Boost Guide to Green in Estonia”.

As the client wanted the event to be as green as possible, we asked Baltic Travel Group’s project manager Reelika Allemann to talk about the green solutions which were used.

Where did the event take place and why was this venue chosen?

• In cooperation with the client, Hektor Container Hotel in Tallinn was chosen as the venue seeing as it was the one that best met the client’s expectations when it came to a sustainable approach.
• The Hektor Container Hotel, located in the Telliskivi Creative City, is built from shipping containers, giving them a new life in the form of cosy, high-quality hotel rooms.

Hektor Container Hotel’s contributions to environmental sustainability:

• The bedding in the rooms is made of Ecolabel and Öko-tex quality-labelled pure cotton sheets, washed with environmentally friendly detergents according to Greenkey conditions.
• The hotel rooms are equipped with Oma Care, a washing soap with natural ingredients produced in Estonia, as well as Mulierese 99.97 – a paraben-free vegan laundry detergent made from natural ingredients produced in Estonia.
• Soap dispensers and toilet paper made from old tetra packs are used in both hotel rooms and public toilets.
• They are active with sorting and recycling materials all throughout the hotel.

What sustainable solutions were used at the event?

• Our chosen catering service only used fresh ingredients and we opted for serving tap water exclusively for both reception drinks and performer refreshments.
• Only standard crockery and glasses were used. The event was plastic-free and avoided the use of disposable utensils entirely.
•  We only used live plants already available in the hotel as decorations instead of purchasing custom one-time decor.
• The event was paperless: all event information and the programme were displayed in digital form only, including the use of tablets at the tables as menus.
• The signposts and information boards were made from Re-board, an environmentally friendly material made from scraps and 100% recyclable when recycled.
• The name badges and reservation tags were made from seed paper, which meant the recipient can plant the paper in a pot or flowerbed and rejoice as the plants sprout.
• Instead of printing, we used a local calligrapher who prepared all the labels by hand on-site.
• In a major change, the organisers decided not to order new lanyards for the event and reused existing ones. At the end of the event, all the lanyards were collected again to be reused for another event.

What were the biggest challenges in organising a sustainable event?

The most important thing was to understand the clientʼs wishes and really go the extra mile as it was obvious that that a green mindset was very important to them. Itʼs a good idea to repeat the the three R-s while your planning out the aspects of your conference- reduce, reuse and recycle! As event organisers, we took great care to ensure that we le as small a footprint as possible aer the event.

Finally, could you please tell us a little bit more about the company Baltic Travel Group?

Baltic Travel Group is a leading full-service tour operator with offices in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. Our main focus is serving corporate clients and conference groups in the Baltics and worldwide. Our experienced team has served more than 720 000 visitors from 80 different countries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during 20 years of operation.

In addition to customer confidence and high-quality service, BTG is committed to promoting a green mindset. Reducte, reuse and recycle arethree keywords that are becoming more and more important in the organisation of events, so we actibely keep up to date with developments in the field and look for alternatives to organise events in a more environmentally sustainable way.

Want to organise your own event in an environmentally sustainable way?

• Feel free to contact the Baltic Travel Group team: Reelika Allemann, Baltic Travel Group, Project Manager, Tel +372 58058639, reelika.allemann@btgroup.ee.