Vanessa King, ACC Research and Business Development Officer

Adelaide Convention Centre (ACC) has continued its relationship with Trees for Life with green thumbed Centre employees planting more than 500 trees at Mount Effie in South Australia.

The partnership also includes onsite native tree propagation at the Centre itself. With time volunteered by ACC employees, the Centre has managed to successfully propagate 2250 native seedlings and planted approximately 1900 trees over the past three years.

The tree plantings, part of a program initiated at the ACC in 2009, assist in offsetting carbon emissions generated by events held at the Centre.

Adelaide Convention Centre Chief Executive Alec Gilbert said the Centre has built a strong and valuable relationship with Trees for Life and is delighted to be part of its carbon offset program.

“The carbon offset program forms part of the Sustainable Meeting Package offered to clients by the Centre. ACC was the first Convention Centre in Australia to offer the Packages,” said Mr Gilbert.

“If a client chooses the Package, the cost of calculating and offsetting of an event’s emissions is covered by the ACC. The Package also includes the use of low food mile produce, rooms powered by certified renewable electricity and the supply of recycled stationary.

The Package is part of the Centre’s Gold Service Green Attitude which runs through the culture of the organisation and aims to minimise our environmental footprint and significantly reduce waste.

Our employees are supportive and engaged with this approach and 15 members of our team took part in the third tree planting day on July 14.”

Adelaide Convention Centre is also on track to become the first convention centre in Australia to achieve the coveted EarthCheck Gold certification for its sustainability practices.

The internationally respected EarthCheck Program, run by EC3 Global, is used by more than 1100 tourism and travel organisations in 65 countries.