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Climate change and sustainability are on the agenda for this week’s Democratic National Convention, which began Monday in Chicago, with speakers including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But climate-minded delegates and voters may wonder what is so sustainable about a gathering that draws 50,000 people from across the country, most of them by plane.
In other words, convention organizers want to make sure they walk the talk that people will hear this week.
There’s a plan for that, including a mix of carbon offset programs that will emphasize local donations, with a focus on waste removal and recycling that should triple the impact at United Center, where the convention is headquartered.
It will also be the first Democratic convention to collect compost, organizers said.
“For large-scale events, travel is often a big emissions factor — the number one emissions factor, in many cases,” said Marley Finnegan, a local sustainability advisor who is part of the team implementing the green strategies for the convention.
Delegates, journalists, volunteers and even protesters will notice the first sign of these initiatives in their inboxes and at airports and hotels. Incentives will call on guests to anonymously share their travel details, which the convention staff will then tabulate to estimate overall travel exemptions.
It is part of a carbon mitigation program called the Travel Carbon Input Initiative.
The idea is that convention-goers will send in donations to help reduce the total climate impact that organizers deem unavoidable as a result of hosting the event in Chicago. This is much like carbon offsetting, a practice in which entities—usually corporations—reimburse third-party offset providers via credits. An example: an oil company buys carbon offsets and promises to plant trees in the Amazon.
Critics have another word for offsets: “greenwashing.”
But Barbara Haya sees a distinction between typical carbon offset programs and what the convention is trying to do. She is the director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at the University of California, Berkeley and has studied carbon deposits for more than two decades.
In some cases, Haya explains, programs have exaggerated carbon credits ten and 13 turn over But she adds that the “carbon offset” underway at the DNC avoids these classic pitfalls, in part because it’s not exactly offset — a variation on carbon offsets in which companies reduce emissions within their own operations, as opposed to asking someone otherwise paying to pull carbon from the atmosphere.
At the heart of the initiative, convention organizers encourage individuals coming to the event to make an investment in sustainable development by donating directly to a local organization. It is not technically a carbon offset or an insert, despite the DNC’s carbon management language. Still, Haya called the program an ideal alternative to carbon offsets.
“It’s more than worth it,” Haya said. “The DNC created a model for what convention teams should do — that’s the ideal.”
The “insets” will ensure that all donations go towards funding local projects, such as Growing Home, the only USDA-certified high-production urban farm in Chicago.
“We take vacant lots, concrete lots, and turn them into vegetation,” says Jenelle St. John, executive director of Growing Home in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. “Our existence in an urban environment is a positive outcome when you think about climate and various ways that we can all run away from this very big problem.”
The donation money will help the nonprofit fund its day-to-day operations as well as its green workforce development program.
The other sustainability initiatives this week are behind the scenes. For example, to help power the convention, organizers partnered with ComEd, the regional utility, to bring in electricity directly from the street to ditch the diesel-powered generators used in the past.
Recycling is expected to play a major role as organizers plan to increase the recycling capacity of the United Center, aiming to double or triple the current recycling rate by adding more bins, dedicated staff and signage.
As part of the convention’s upgraded waste disposal strategy, it will be the first Democratic convention in history to collect compost. Organic materials as well as recyclables will be diverted from the landfill at McCormick Place and the United Center.
“Sustainability is a critical element of the Democratic National Convention,” said Stephanie Katsaros, one of the local sustainability advisors working with the DNC.
Katsaros and Finnegan worked with the venues, delegates, hotels, vendors, city officials and local groups to deliver guides to encourage them to embrace sustainable practices. The pair will collect data on everything from travel emissions to energy use and even menu choices, and report key findings once the event wraps up to see if it achieves its ambitious goal: “the most sustainable convention in history.”
“This convention has the potential to leave a transformative legacy,” Katsaros said.
