Exercises: Sustainability
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State the chapter's threshold concept. Why are the significant choices not on standard checklists?
A.2 Give the seven footprint lines in order, with typical ranges.
A.3 ★ Give the three comparisons that reset intuitions: one long-haul flight ≈ how many beef dinners? How many forks?
A.4 What is the boundary problem, and what are the three defensible positions? Which is not defensible?
A.5 ★ Give the eight steps of computing a footprint. Which two are 80–95% of the answer?
A.6 Name the eight travel levers in order. Which three are decided before a planner is usually engaged?
A.7 ★ Give the four food levers in order of size. Which do clients and vendors talk about most?
A.8 Why is "local" frequently over-credited?
A.9 What does switching 100 beef mains to chicken save, and what is that equivalent to?
A.10 ★ Name five impacts a carbon number does not capture, with an event example for each.
A.11 State the reuse hierarchy in order. Which tier is the only free one, and where does most event sustainability start?
A.12 ★ What is the real obstacle to food donation? What must you establish first, and what is not waived?
A.13 Why is "compostable" not a property of an object? What three questions replace it?
A.14 Give the five questions to ask any sustainability claim. Which is most effective?
A.15 ★ Give six things in the "costs nothing or saves money" column, and state the argument that works with a client.
A.16 Give the three rules for telling guests, and say what the model paragraph does.
A.17 ★ State the conflict of interest in §35.9 plainly, and give the practical resolution.
A.18 What is the defensible position on offsetting? Name three further limits the chapter states.
A.19 ★ What is Scope 3, and what should you send a client's sustainability team instead of a spreadsheet of emissions?
A.20 Why is an accurate final guest count both a budget instrument and a waste measure?
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Compute the footprint of an event you know, using the eight steps. Twenty minutes for steps 2 and 4. Report the ranking and what it tells you to stop doing.
B.2 Write the venue-selection travel conversation for a couple choosing between a venue 30 minutes from most guests and one two hours away. Include the argument that serves their own interest.
B.3 ★ A 300-person conference: 40 long-haul, 95 short-haul, 110 driving 70 km, 55 by rail, two days, 140 room-nights. Compute it, and identify the single change worth more than everything else.
B.4 Compute the menu decision for 180 guests across beef, chicken, and vegetarian. Attach the flight equivalence and write the sentence you say to the client.
B.5 ★ Build the six-tier diversion plan for a rural marquee wedding with no waste infrastructure and a 10 a.m. handback. Names and times.
B.6 Write the food donation protocol: receiving organisation, caterer agreement, containers, temperature and time, transport, and the surplus estimate. Say what you establish in writing first.
B.7 ★ Evaluate these three claims using the five questions: "our packaging is 100% compostable" · "we've reduced our carbon by 40%" · "all our flowers are sustainably sourced."
B.8 Write the guest paragraph for a wedding, under 90 words, following the three rules.
B.9 ★ A corporate client's sustainability team requests the event's emissions. Write what you send — the actual data structure — and the covering note.
B.10 A client says "we want it to be zero waste." Write your answer.
B.11 ★ $25,000 is available for sustainability at a 900-person conference whose footprint is 2,100 tonnes, 88% aviation. Allocate it and write the claim the client can actually make.
B.12 Compute a diversion rate for a 200-guest event and write the two-sentence report that separates diversion from carbon.
B.13 ★ A florist offers imported stems with a lower carbon footprint than local greenhouse-grown ones. Work through the decision, naming every impact carbon does not capture.
B.14 Design the registration questions that would give you clean travel activity data. Under six questions, and say why each is there.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Use two different free carbon calculators on the same event. Report how much they disagree and what that means for reporting.
C.2 Ask a venue what actually happens to each waste stream. Report the answer and whether they knew.
C.3 ★ Find your jurisdiction's food-donation liability protections and their conditions. Report what they cover and what they do not.
C.4 Find out whether a commercial composting facility serves a venue you know, and whether its waste contractor uses it. Report both answers.
C.5 ★ Ask three vendors what they actually do about sustainability. Not what they claim — what they do. Report which answers were substantive.
C.6 Contact a hospice or care home about receiving event flowers. Report what they need and whether anybody had asked before.
C.7 ★ Weigh or estimate the waste at one real event by stream. Compute the diversion rate honestly, then compute the CO₂e it represents.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 The chapter says most event sustainability is theatre. Is that fair to people doing the small things sincerely? Answer it.
D.2 ★ §35.3 says a planner should raise the travel question and then drop it. Argue that a planner with this knowledge has a stronger obligation than "mention it once." Then say where the line is.
D.3 ★ §35.9 admits a planner's income scales against the environmental interest. Does that admission solve the problem or just disclose it? What would solving it look like?
D.4 The chapter uses carbon as the primary ranking metric while conceding it misses five things. Is that coherent, or is it optimising a metric it has just discredited?
D.5 ★ §35.5's diversion arithmetic — 83% diverted, ~15 kg CO₂e — could be read as an argument against bothering. Answer that reading, and say what the section should have emphasised more.
D.6 The chapter recommends telling guests once, briefly, and never implying their travel was a problem. A climate campaigner would say that is exactly the norm-preserving politeness that keeps aviation invisible. Engage seriously.
D.7 ★ The productive struggle refuses "carbon neutral." Argue that refusing a client's stated goal exceeds a planner's remit — and then decide.
D.8 Estimate the total emissions of every event in your country in a year, roughly. Then say honestly what an individual planner's practice is worth, and whether §35.9's "norms compound" argument holds.
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.14) How is the guarantee a waste measure? What does Chapter 30's reconciliation reveal?
M.2 (Ch.17) What transfers from floral sourcing, and what does this chapter add? How large is the line honestly?
M.3 ★ (Ch.33) What does §35.2 say about destination events, and what does that do to Chapter 33's exercise E.3?
M.4 (Ch.13) Which two Chapter 13 decisions affect this chapter, and where does freight sit in the ranking?
M.5 ★ (Ch.5) The guest count is the master variable. Where does it appear in this chapter, and how many times?
M.6 (Ch.29) Where does the notice ranking appear here, and what does it settle about favours?
M.7 ★ (Ch.31) A hybrid track is a programme decision. Whose conversation is it, and what does Chapter 31 say about who can make it?
M.8 (Ch.34) Which two Chapter 34 items are meaningful energy loads, and why is one invisible?
M.9 ★ (Ch.12) What does "keep the good suppliers in business" have to do with sustainability?
M.10 (Ch.30) Where does the diversion plan belong in the load-out, and who owns it?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Build the full footprint and diversion analysis for a real event, including the activity-data pack from §35.8a. Then send the pack to somebody and ask whether they could use it.
E.2 Research the current state of the voluntary carbon market and the criticisms of it. Report what a defensible offset purchase would require you to verify.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on whether a planner should ever decline work on environmental grounds. Take a position you would state to a prospective client, and be specific about what you would still take.
E.4 Research one event-sustainability certification scheme in detail. Report what it measures, what it does not, and whether it captures the two lines that dominate.
E.5 ★ Design the registration and data-collection system that would let a planner produce clean activity data as a routine byproduct. Then cost the extra work honestly.
E.6 Interview somebody responsible for corporate sustainability reporting about what they receive from event suppliers. Report what is useful and what gets thrown away.
📐 Mini-Project
Take one real event and do the whole thing.
- The footprint, eight steps, ranked — and stop when the ranking is clear
- The two conversations you would have had earlier: venue, and menu
- The diversion plan, six tiers, with names and times
- The donation protocols — food and flowers — with what you established in writing
- Three vendor claims, evaluated against the five questions
- The guest paragraph
- The honest report — diversion as diversion, carbon as carbon, and the boundary stated
- The activity-data pack, if the client is corporate
Then the hard part: show the ranking to whoever chose the venue.
Record their reaction. Most people are surprised, some are defensive, and a few are relieved — and which of the three you get tells you a great deal about whether the conversation was ever available.