Green MSE 2020: Great success for people, science, and environment
Around 1.000 participants made “Materials Science and Engineering” (MSE) a success story again in 2020. From September 22nd to 25th, an internationally diverse audience gathered on the DGM’s Conference Platform to listen to lectures, present their own research results, view posters, or stroll through the virtual exhibition. Even though face-to-face contact was omitted, the MSE still offered the opportunity for personal exchange via networking sessions and video chats – which was gladly and actively taken up by all participants.
Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini, head of the Institute for Biomaterials (WW7), was a member of the scientific committee of MSE 2020 and attended the conference as symposium organiser, session chair and speaker. He said: “MSE 2020 was my first ever full digital conference and I attended as many sessions as possible as I was wondering if the format would work and participants would have a positive experience. I have to say that I was positively surprised by the possibilities that digital conferences offer, it was overall well received, this was also the opinion of the members of my group who attended MSE 2020. Surely we all miss the face to face interaction with colleagues for both the scientific and the personal contacts, but digital meetings provide indeed a positive alternative for scientific exchanges in these difficult times and DGM has established a very versatile platform and organisation to deliver such digital conferences in the most effective way”.
However, the conference was not only a great success as alternative concept for scientific exchange: The positive effect for the environment was impressive, as well.
Normally, 300 participants would have had to travel long distances in order to participate in the conference. By eliminating the need for air travel the environment was spared to an extent that takes on an impressive dimension in the sum of its individual international particles.
The much-cited “green footprint” represents the amount of CO2 emissions that an aircraft emits per passenger over a certain distance. In the case of the MSE, only the kilometers traveled by the international participants were taken into account for the following calculation, for the sake of standardization each from the capital city airport of the home country to Frankfurt am Main – including the outbound and return flights. The range was from short trips from Luxembourg (400 kilometers) to intercontinental flights to and from New Zealand (37,200 kilometers). All in all, this would have added up to just over 2,000,000 kilometers of air travel – or 50 circumnavigations of the earth!
Even more impressive is the focussed view of the burden on the environment, which was exposed in this way. Considering the mentioned travel kilometers, the 300 international MSE participants would have emitted 354.49 tons of CO2 – this corresponds to the weight of 60 adult African elephants!
According to the common definition, one beech tree binds approx. 12.5 kilograms of CO2 per year. This in turn means that 80 trees would have to be planted to compensate for the emission of one ton of CO2 respectively. With reference to the MSE, correspondingly over 28.300 saplings would have had to be planted to compensate for the impact of conference participants traveling via plane.
The year 2020 has come with many restrictions, it has literally demanded sacrifices. At the same time, people around the globe have demonstrated, sometimes impressively, that they defy these adversities, that they develop alternative solutions, and that they think outside the box despite spatial limitations. It is precisely this view that allows us to look at our own green footprint from a positive angle.