Newsletters
EARLGoing Green with the EANM!
According to the definition formulated by the United Nations Brundtland Commission in 1987, sustainability is understood as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’, through a careful balance between socio-economic development and environmental protection.
The EANM has established a two-folded approach to meet this goal: supporting the nuclear medicine community and elevating patient care while consciously minimising our ecological footprint. This strategy is central to our core mission of nurturing the next generation of nuclear medicine experts.
Our sustainability framework encompasses every facet of our operations:
- Our transportation logistics are meticulously crafted to minimise our ecological transport impact.
- We actively promote the use of public transportation among our attendees by selecting accommodations that are conveniently located near our congress venue.
- Embracing a paperless ethos, we have transitioned from traditional posters to digital presentations and developed a Congress App to ensure our participants have digital access to congress materials.
- We collaborate with venues that reflect our commitment to environmental responsibility. This year, we are very pleased to be working with the Congress Center Hamburg, which put together an extensive sustainability plan.
- We have introduced the BYOBx2 initiatives:
- The ‘Bring Your Own Bag’ initiative promotes a culture of reusability, urging participants to reuse bags from previous events, thereby preventing the EANM from manufacturing new ones and diminishing our carbon footprint.
- The ‘Bring Your Own Bottle’ initiative encourages attendees to bring and refill their reusable bottles, aiming to cut down on single-use plastic usage. This is facilitated by the fact that we provide water refill stations at all our events.
- We exclusively partner with caterers who mainly source their produce locally and avoid single-use plastics.
- Although our goal is to minimise paper usage, printing badges remains necessary. As such, all our badges are free of heavy metal and chlorine, and are produced without solvents, making them 100% recyclable with paper waste.
- We have harnessed the power of digital learning, offering online learning opportunities and webinars to cut down on unnecessary travel. Check out our ESMIT website to learn more.
- We make most of our course materials available online, embracing a paperless approach.
- Our Vienna-based Executive Office was chosen for its central location, which facilitates the access to public transportation, and encourages green commutes for our team and volunteers.
- We actively encourage waste separation in our workplace.
- Acknowledging the unique value of in-person interactions, especially given the global diversity of our nuclear medicine specialists, we do recognise that air travel remains a necessity. Nonetheless, we remain deeply committed to environmental responsibility and have actively implemented measures to minimise our carbon footprint wherever feasible:
– For reachable distances, we favour rail travel over air to lessen our carbon emissions.
– For all flights booked by the EANM Office, we chose to offset Co2 emissions. - To avoid waste and limit our food waste footprint, we are mindful of the quantities of food and office supplies we order.
Sustainability Wall
Understanding that visual aids often speak louder than words, we proudly introduced our first Sustainability Wall at our 36th Annual Congress (EANM’23).
In partnership with EEC Energy and Environmental Consulting GmbH, we have quantified the EANM’s environmental impact and the tangible benefits of our green initiatives.
