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Conference praised for green effort

2 April 2008

Organisers of the Ozzawa medical education conference implemented simple initiatives to reduce their global environmental footprint.

The Ozzawa medical education conference held recently in Melbourne has been praised for its efforts to 'go green.' The conference, jointly sponsored by Monash University, was held over three days in March. Organisers placed a particular emphasis on reducing their global environmental footprint, a move applauded by the more than 1000 international delegates in attendance.

Some initiatives included:

  • Abstracts were submitted and reviewed online, replacing more traditional systems of paper-based submission and replication to send to multiple reviewers;
  • A fully searchable PDF of the abstract book was made available for download to PDAs, phones and laptops, saving an estimated half a million A4 pages and over a million pages worth of ink;
  • Delegates were encouraged to recycle their conference satchels. The recycled satchels are on their way to Cairo to be used as incentives for refugee women to visit a new "well child" clinic serving one of the largest and most impoverished refugee camps for people from the Sudan;
  • Evaluation of the conference was conducted entirely online, again producing enormous paper and printer savings;
  • Teleconferencing was used to plan the conference with only one face-to-face meeting convened. This reduced the amount of air travel by the group;
  • The conference was held at the Melbourne Convention Centre which has a six green-star environmental rating, the first in the world for a convention centre.

Monash Director of Environmental Sustainability Paul Barton said it was fantastic that conference organisers made an effort to reduce their impact on the environment by implementing the simple initiatives.

"I would particularly like to commend the efforts of Professor Brian Jolly from the Faculty of Medicine," Mr Barton said.

"He was a driving force behind these initiatives and really has helped highlight how we can all adapt our usual behaviour and in doing so significantly reduce our environmental impact."

For more information on 'Greening up our Act' go to the Monash environment website. For further information on the conference visit the Ozzawa website.