Quiz: Sustainability
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. At almost every event, the largest single footprint line is:
(a) Food and beverage (b) Guest travel (c) Energy and generators (d) Waste and materials
Answer
**(b)** — typically **50–90%**, and dominated by anybody who flies. **The Reyes–Whitfield wedding was 94% travel.**Q2. One long-haul return flight is roughly equivalent to:
(a) 40 beef dinners (b) 400 beef dinners, or 150,000 disposable forks (c) 4,000 beef dinners (d) A day of generator running
Answer
**(b).** Which is why **a planner who spends their sustainability effort on cutlery has bought the feeling of having acted.**Q3. The significant choices are not on standard checklists because:
(a) People are not serious about sustainability (b) The data does not exist (c) They do not look like sustainability choices — they look like guest-list and menu conversations (d) They are too expensive
Answer
**(c).** *"How many people and how far"* is a guest-list conversation; *"what's the main course"* is a menu conversation. **Nobody files them under environment.**Q4. Of the eight footprint-estimation steps, the two that are 80–95% of the answer:
(a) Boundary and materials (b) Freight and energy (c) Guests and food (d) Waste and accommodation
Answer
**(c)** — and they take about **twenty minutes between them.** **Everything else is refinement of a rounding error**, and the ranking is the output while the total is decoration.Q5. The largest food lever is:
(a) Whether ingredients are local (b) Whether ingredients are organic (c) What the protein is (d) Whether packaging is compostable
Answer
**(c).** **Beef and lamb are three to five times a chicken dish and five to ten times a vegetarian one.** "Local" is frequently over-credited — **transport is typically under 10% of a food item's footprint.**Q6. Switching 100 beef mains to chicken saves roughly:
(a) 40 kg CO₂e (b) 350–450 kg CO₂e — about one guest's short-haul return flight (c) 4 tonnes (d) Nothing measurable
Answer
**(b)** — **and it usually costs less**, which makes it the only large lever in the chapter that saves the client money.Q7. In the reuse hierarchy, most event sustainability starts at:
(a) Prevent (b) Reuse (c) Redistribute (d) Recycle
Answer
**(d)** — **and the money is in tiers one to three.** **Prevent is the only free tier**: not ordering the favours nobody wants.Q8. The real obstacle to donating surplus food is usually:
(a) The law (b) The belief about the law (c) Cost (d) Guest objections
Answer
**(b).** *"We're not allowed to, for liability reasons"* is said by caterers who have never checked. **Many jurisdictions have specific good-faith protections** — **and food safety requirements are real and are not waived.** Establish what applies, in writing, before promising anything.Q9. "Compostable" is:
(a) A property of an object (b) A property of an object plus a facility (c) A regulated term with a single meaning (d) Equivalent to biodegradable
Answer
**(b).** Most such products are **commercially** compostable and behave roughly like plastic in a home heap or a landfill. **The questions are whether the facility exists, whether the contractor uses it, and whether the bins will be clean enough** — because **a contaminated load goes to landfill entire.**Q10. The single most effective question to ask about a sustainability claim:
(a) "Are you certified?" (b) "Is it recyclable?" (c) "Can you show me the number?" (d) "Is it locally sourced?"
Answer
**(c)** — **and it ends most conversations.** The others: compared to what · who verified it · what share of your total · what happens afterwards.Q11. When a corporate client's sustainability team asks for the event's emissions, you should send:
(a) Your own emissions calculation as a spreadsheet (b) The underlying activity data, with the boundary stated (c) A certificate (d) Nothing, since it is their responsibility
Answer
**(b).** Passenger-km by mode, room-nights, covers by menu type, kWh, vehicle-km — **and let their team apply their own factors and methodology.** **A number you produced in an afternoon becomes a line in a disclosure with legal weight.**Q12. Offsetting should be:
(a) Reported as a reduction (b) The first line of a sustainability budget (c) Reduced to first, with the residual reported honestly and the purchase named (d) Avoided entirely
Answer
**(c).** **It is not a reduction and should never be reported as one.** Market quality is contested and verification is hard. **Say what you bought, from whom, verified by whom — and never let it substitute for the venue decision.**Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. A high waste-diversion rate is a strong carbon achievement.
Answer
**False, and the distinction matters.** **83% diverted is a genuine achievement and about 15 kg of avoided CO₂e** against a wedding footprint of several thousand. **Report it as waste diversion, which it is** — not as a carbon achievement, which it is not.Q14. Waste work is not worth doing, since it is under 2% of emissions.
Answer
**False.** **Its value is not carbon.** A hundred kilograms of plastic film in a rural landfill is a real harm that the carbon number scores at almost zero — **which is exactly why §35.4a exists: a carbon number does not see water, biodiversity, local pollution, plastic persistence, or labour conditions.**Q15. A locally grown flower always has a lower footprint than an imported one.
Answer
**False.** **Imported stems grown in high natural sunlight can have a lower carbon footprint than local greenhouse-grown ones raised with heat** — **and a considerably larger water and land footprint, sometimes where water is scarce.** Use carbon to decide where the effort goes; **use judgment about everything else once you are there.**Q16. Guests should be told about the event's environmental impact so they can learn from it.
Answer
**False as stated.** **Nobody came to be educated.** State it once, briefly, in a place people are already reading; **say what was done, not what people should do**; and **never make a guest feel their attendance was a problem.** They were invited.Q17. A planner can certify their own event's sustainability performance.
Answer
**False.** **Certification is a third-party function**, and a planner who signs off their own claim has misunderstood the word. **You can measure, report the boundary, and state that figures are estimates.**Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. Explain why most event sustainability is theatre, without accusing anybody of insincerity.
Answer
**Because the visible choices and the significant choices are almost entirely different sets.** **Single-use plastics, recycling, local flowers, no confetti, digital invitations are all real — and together typically under five per cent of the footprint.** **Guest travel and food are 60–95%** and appear on no checklist, because they do not look like environmental decisions. **And the second mechanism is measurement:** waste is countable and weighable, **travel emissions are diffuse, borne by others, and impossible to weigh** — so the boundary gets drawn where the data is. **The result is an impressive diversion rate, a list of local suppliers, and no mention of the largest line. It is not dishonest, and the effect is the same.**Q19. Give the travel levers in order, and say which are not a planner's to decide.
Answer
**Where the event is relative to the guests · how many come · whether it is a destination event · coaches and shuttles · on-site accommodation · car-sharing · vendor freight · offsetting.** **The first three are the biggest and all three belong to the client** — and are usually decided before a planner is engaged. **Which is precisely why raising them early, once, factually, is the highest-value act in this chapter** — and why the script mentions turnout and guests getting home, **because the argument that also serves the client's own interest is the one that survives the year.**Q20. State the conflict of interest in §35.9 and its practical resolution.
Answer
**A planner's income scales with event size and budget.** A planner paid a percentage has a direct financial interest in more guests, more suppliers, and a more elaborate event — **and every one of those increases the footprint.** **The most sustainable version of most events is a smaller one closer to home.** **That does not make the advice dishonest. It makes it advice given by somebody with an interest**, which a reader is entitled to know. **The resolution is not to refuse work.** **It is to make sure the client hears the largest levers early, in plain terms, and then to build whatever they choose, well** — **you supply the arithmetic; they supply the decision.**Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. A pharmaceutical company's investigator meeting. 340 attendees from 26 countries, four days, a European city, €1.4M. Roughly 240 fly, of whom 90 long-haul. The company reports under a mandatory sustainability regime and its team has asked you for event emissions data. The event owner wants "the greenest possible meeting" and has €55,000 for it.
Produce: the footprint estimate by line · the one change worth more than everything else · what you send the sustainability team · how you allocate the €55,000 · and the claim the client can honestly make.