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Climate Action at ASLA 2026

Make More Sustainable Choices  |   Offset Your Emissions  |   Use the ASLA Conversation Guide with EXPO Exhibitors  | Learn about ASLA's Commitments and Partnerships  

Attendees won’t need to go out of their way to be sustainable at ASLA. Learn about the easy ways you can make an individual impact on the event’s sustainability efforts. 

Make More Sustainable Choices

• Choose lower-emissions travel: Take the train to the Conference. Or carpool with other students or colleagues. If flying, fly economy and choose direct flights when possible.
  
  
• Reuse and Reduce: Bring a reusable water bottle to reduce your waste and resource use.
  
  
• Eat mostly plant-based foods: Take only what you need at food functions and choose to eat vegetarian at least one meal per day to help reduce carbon emissions associated with food production.
  
  
• Be energy and water smart at your hotel: Turn off lights when leaving your hotel room and participate in linen reuse programs to conserve water.
  
  
• Use public transportation: Los Angeles offers subway, light rail, buses, and shuttles. Check out the Guide to Los Angeles Public Transit for more details.  

Offset Your Emissions

Offset your emissions through ASLA partner, National Indian Carbon Coalition.

More than 6,000 attendees will travel to Los Angeles to engage, network, and learn from each other in a way that can only be achieved through real-life interaction. ASLA is aware of the carbon footprint of these connections and has committed to minimizing the impact. ASLA has partnered with the National Indian Carbon Coalition (NICC) to offset emissions from the ASLA 2026 Conference.

The offsets come from the Blackfeet Nation’s forest carbon project in Montana, which will protect 34 million trees. The initiative supports Indigenous environmental stewardship, enhanced resilience and biodiversity, and renewable energy. Each $45 contribution will offset three metric tons of your travel and conference emissions.100% of contributions will be used to purchase third-party verified offsets from NICC, registered with the American Carbon Registry.

The Blackfeet Nation will use the income from your carbon offset purchase to:

• Rejuvenate 69,000 acres of forest
• Restore landscapes to reduce wildfire risk
• Support migratory pathways
• Acquire additional traditional homelands
• Develop renewable energy projects
• Support social programs

Explore the Blackfeet Nation’s Stewardship Story

Make a Lasting Impact: Support Indigenous-led Climate & Biodiversity Action

  

See the results of ASLA members’ positive climate contributions:

• 2023: 1,226 MTCO2e offsets contributed to Green Minneapolis (44% of total emissions)
• 2024: 3,566 MTCO2e offsets contributed to NICC (112% of total emissions)
• 2025: 3,391 MTCO2e offsets contributed to NICC (89% of total emissions)

Use the ASLA Conversation Guide with EXPO Exhibitors

Deeper collaboration between landscape architects and industry partners is key to achieving ASLA Climate Action Plan and biodiversity goals.

To support that collaboration, the ASLA Corporate Member Committee and Climate Action Committees have produced this guide for landscape architects. It is meant to inform conversations with industry partners and offers a range of questions to ask.

In the ASLA EXPO, you can use this guide to talk to industry partners about ways to advance collective climate and biodiversity goals.

ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan

ASLA is committed to making the Conference on Landscape Architecture a model for sustainable event planning. Each year, ASLA conducts a sustainability assessment to evaluate and report on the conference’s impacts—and to guide practical improvements year over year. As described in ASLA’s sustainability reporting, assessments consider:

• Greenhouse gas emissions (travel, venue operations, event activities)
• Energy use
• Water use
• Waste and recycling performance
• Materials (printing, signage, giveaways, and other event materials)

Findings from these assessments inform changes to reduce the conference footprint and expand equitable access and accountability. Learn more and view past reports here: ASLA Conference Sustainable Event Reports.

ASLA's Commitment to a More Sustainable Conference

Since the launch of ASLA’s Climate Action Plan in 2022, conference organizers have made numerous sustainable improvements to conference operations in alignment with the plan. Executed in partnership with conference vendors, sponsors, and sustainability consultant Honeycomb Strategies, ASLA’s conference sustainability program includes:

• Measuring and reporting conference sustainability performance
• Making positive climate contributions to offset conference greenhouse gas emissions, via offsets purchased from the National Indian Carbon Coalition
• Introducing an exhibitor sustainability pledge and impact survey
• Eliminating beef from all conference-ordered catering
• Encouraging and measuring the use of train travel by attendees as an alternative to flying
• Incorporating extensive content about climate action, biodiversity, equity, and advocacy throughout conference programming
• Expanding awareness of Black, Indigenous, and Latin American culture and practitioners through conference programming
• Ensuring printed materials, signage, and decorations are recycled and/or recyclable, and that almost all handouts are distributed electronically

Notable achievements since beginning to measure our impact in 2022 include:

• Donated a total of 66 tons of exhibit hall materials to Habitat for Humanity
• Made positive climate contributions through Green Minneapolis (2023) and the National Indian Carbon Coalition (2024-2025), totaling 8,183 metric tonnes of carbon offsets across 2023–2025—equivalent to approximately 84% of total conference greenhouse gas emissions (9,783.66 MTCO2e) over that period.
• Diverted more than 74% of conference waste each year

ASLA will not have a printed conference brochure on site for the 2026 conference. Instead, you'll find everything you need on our conference app.

Partnership is key to becoming more sustainable, and we couldn’t do what we do without the support of our attendees, our exhibitors, partners like Honeycomb Strategies, the Los Angeles Convention Center, Freeman, and other key vendors.