SLAS is dedicated to fostering a greener, more inclusive and sustainable future, exemplified by its commitment to implementing sustainability efforts for the SLAS2025 conference. Recognizing the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility, the Society aims to reduce its ecological footprint, minimize waste and promote eco-friendly practices, ensuring that the conference advances scientific knowledge, contributes positively to the planet and is accessible to all.
Sustainability in Action
Here are actions we’re prioritizing this year to make progress toward our goals:
Donation Programs: SLAS is working with the SDCC to ensure that extra promotional items or event supplies are not wasted by donating them to local organizations (more information is coming soon).
Community Impact: Building on the 2024 Give Back to Boston Program, this year, we aim to give attendees a way to give back to our host city through donations and volunteer engagements that benefit the San Diego community. Our events team is hard at work identifying those partners and will post more information soon!
Support our Diverse Industry: The SLAS program team is building a program that promotes equity and inclusion (DEI) in the Society and industry; program information will be posted in October.
Vendor Procurement and Sustainability Guides: We've implemented supply vetting systems and provided exhibitors with best practices to reduce the expo's environmental impact. The Exhibitor Service Kit will contain these practices.
Offsetting Your Footprint: Travel is an integral aspect of SLAS shows and constitutes our events' primary source of carbon emissions. We've partnered with Acylmate to provide all SLAS2025 attendees with a simple way to calculate their travel footprint and learn about their climate impact.
Signage: We've eliminated foam core signage in favor of recyclable and reusable materials like Honeycomb substrate long ago. We aim to replace printed signage throughout the convention center with digital signage.
Accessibility:Our team is working to create an accessible environment by considering aisle space in the meeting rooms, a registration counter at an ADA-compliant height and more. A comprehensive list of accommodations for SLAS2025 will be provided soon.
In Partnership With
We can't make change without the support of attendees, exhibitors, and key partners like the San Diego Convention Center (SDCC), Freeman and other vendors to make SLAS2025 more environmentally sustainable and accessible.
We’ve partnered with Honeycomb Strategies to manage the sustainability of our event.
You won’t need to go out of your way to be sustainable at SLAS2025. Learn about the easy ways you can make an individual impact on the show’s sustainability efforts.
Offsetting Your Footprint: Use our carbon footprint tool to calculate your lodging, travel and avoided emissions to understand your total event emissions for the conference. Afterward, you can make a monetary contribution to a carbon offset project to neutralize your SLAS2025 emissions footprint.
Freeman has committed to diminish its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030, with a further pledge to achieve net-zero carbon operations by 2050. As a pioneer in the events industry, Freeman is at the forefront of innovation, introducing comprehensive solutions that cover every facet of live events. Freeman has attained ISO 14001 and ISO 20121 certifications to uphold these commitments. We encourage you to delve deeper into the diverse elements of Freeman's innovative approaches across their portfolio of shows.
By sourcing greener, sustainable energy from San Diego Community Power—a nonprofit, community-based clean energy provider, SDCC has increased its renewable percentage from 31% to 50%.
Industry-Leading Food & Beverage Practices
Local sourcing of fruits, vegetables, seafood, and other products is core to SDCC’s food & beverage operations. SDCC purchases within a 150-mile radius (whenever season permits) and participates in local composting programs.
Waste Mitigation
SDCC’s recycling program includes 3-stream waste receptacles divided into paper, recyclables and trash. They also prioritize the purchasing of products made with recyclable and biodegradable materials.
Material & Food Donations
SDCC partners with local organizations like schools, nonprofits, shelters and more to ensure that extra event supplies are not wasted by donating them to these partners. They also partner with the local providers to donate unserved food to San Diegans in need.
Accessibility: Our team is working to create an accessible environment by considering aisle space in the meeting rooms and including a registration counter at an ADA-compliant height. Additionally, the exhibit hall floor will not have carpet.
Special Meals: We are working with the catering team to accommodate dietary restrictions as submitted via the registration page. All food items with common allergies will be listed. For guests needing additional dietary accommodations, emails will be sent out before the conference confirming the location and availability of specialty meals for each meal function included for SLAS2024.
Auditory: Closed captioning services will be available in all scientific podium and general session rooms. Instructions on accessing and utilizing the closed captioning services will be provided on-site.
Quiet Room: SLAS will provide a quiet room to be used by attendees at their discretion should they need to.
Accessible Presentations
To ensure presentations at SLAS are accessible to the attendees, SLAS recommends speakers consider the checklist below when creating their presentations:
Use a sans serif font (e.g. Ariel, Helvetica, Calibiri)
Minimum font size 28 point
Limit the amount of text on each slide
Avoid blinking or flashing lights, images, or graphics
Avoid these color combinations for text/background and within figures:
Green and red
Green and brown
Blue and purple
Green and blue
Light Green and yellow
Blue and grey
Green and grey
Green and black
Do not use color alone to distinguish different data sets; use a combination of both different colors and different symbols
Sustainability-Focused Exhibitors
A company's sustainability efforts can take many forms. We spoke with several of our sustainability-focused SLAS2024 exhibitors, HighRes Bioslutions, Azenta Life Sciences, Jüke Systemtechnik and Labcon, to learn more about what they're doing to be eco-friendly across their products and services to exhibit at conferences like the SLAS International Conference and Exhibition.
Thank You to Our Partners
Thank you to the SLAS2025 International Conference and Exhibition Sustainability Partner, who helped us reach our goals!
About Honeycomb Strategies
Honeycomb Strategies provides sustainability expertise for live events and venues. We help trade shows, conferences, convention centers, arenas and organizations identify sustainable solutions, engage stakeholders, develop data management systems and implement programs to measure impact so that events can thrive. From immediate action planning to long-term goals, our work helps clients demonstrate leadership and commitment to environmental and social sustainability. As a women-owned business and accredited B Corporation, Honeycomb Strategies aims to inspire people to see sustainability as both an opportunity and a responsibility.
About Aclymate
Aclymate's vision is to create a world where everyone is educated about and empowered to act for humanity’s best climate future. To accomplish that goal, their mission is to inspire and equip small businesses to lead on climate mitigation. Aclymate provides the climate solution built for the 99+% of people who don't run sustainability teams for large corporations. They measure the emissions across life—at work, home and events—to help identify, reduce, offset and report climate pollution.
