[Adam Ef]

I used to work for a conference company setting up AV equipment, PAs, microphones and projectors for energy conservation conferences. They often used to hire us to travel from Bristol to London in a LWB van to collect all the kit and then drive to Edinburgh or York fully loaded to set up. Then take down the next day and do the journey in reverse. Not sure why they never hired local companies.


The conferences themsleves were lavish affairs with lots of waste (eg if a bottle of sparkling water was opened for just one glass to be drunk the rest was poured away. At the end of each conference most tables had two types of water and three types of squash opened with just an inch or two missing from the top. They must have thrown away a lot of bottled water and fruit squash.) Food from lunches was thrown despite me asking if I could take some home to have when I got in late... health and safety, it wasn't allowed. One went as far as to tell me that the asparagus quiche would be thrown or fed to the deer they had in the grounds of the hotel. We didn't ask about the fruit squash and just smuggled it out in our backpacks as it seemed so wasteful. Another guy in my shared house worked with me at the time and between us we developed a pretty impressive stash of bottles of squash in our kitchen.



The biggest irony was that all delegates were trying their best by using solar powered calculators, but they didn't work in the dimly lit rooms. So we always had to turn lights on and open blinds, then ramp up the brightness on the projectors so they could be seen. That kind of summed up the whole farce for me.