In 2018, for IAPCO’s 50th Anniversary, the Not Just a Drop in the Ocean Campaign was launched with mascot ‘Ticky the Turtle’ whose purpose was to promote the adverse effects that single-use plastics were having on the oceans and seas around the world.
IAPCO felt that the meetings and events industry was, at that time, not as aware of this global issue as it should have been, so felt that a campaign to raise awareness to our membership of over 133 companies with combined workforce of over 9200 employees was important to do. Our members delivered over 18,660 total meetings around the world that year so the potential of single-use plastics being used and then discarded to enter into the oceans and onto beaches was massive.
The objective was quite simple: to inspire 50 organisations to take the IAPCO Plastics Pledge by committing to making real, measurable changes to their use of single-use plastic at their events and within their organisations by the IAPCO Annual Meeting in Vancouver in February 2020.
Ticky the Turtle has inspired an incredible number of organisations, including government funded convention and visitor bureax, events agencies, events venues and hotels and, of course, our professional congress organisers members to join our IAPCO Pledge to consciously reduce the use of single-use plastics at conferences, meetings and events and within their offices. The link between Ticky and the UN Strategic Development Goals, specifically UN SDG14 – ‘Life Below Water’ is obvious.
Therefore, IAPCO is proud to leverage Ticky’s popularity to support and promote the UNSDGs’ objectives. Together, with your pledges, we can all do our part to support the United Nations Strategic Development Goal (UN SDG) #14 – Life Below Water.
The next steps for Ticky the Turtle is to further develop this campaign in the near future to include measurement tools for IAPCO members and to also extend our support to other UN SDG’s.
Find out more about the campaign and take the pledge at: https://www.iapco.org/about-iapco/ticky-the-turtle/
List of completed IAPCO Plastics Pledge received:
1. KW Conferences, India
2. Conference Partners, Ireland
3. ICMS Pty Ltd, Australia
4. Podium Conferences, Canada
5. AIM Group International
6. AFEA Travel and Congress Services
7. OIC Group
8. Hamburg Convention Bureau
9. Business Events Toronto
10. CPO Hanser Service GmBH
11. Erasmus
12. ESRA
13. Kenes Group
14. MECI
15. Parthen Meeting Essentials
16. MCI France
17. Kuoni Congress
18. Ega worldwide congresses and events
19. C-IN
20. Edmonton Convention Centre
21. Arinex
22. MCI Australia
23. MCI Group
24. BCO Congresos
25. Abbey Conference & Events
26. International Conference Services (ICS)
27. MCI UK
28. MCEC
29. Hong Kong Convention Exhibition Centre (Management) Limited (HML)
30. Conference Compass
