Climate Action at ASLA 2026: Offset Your Emissions, Plan a Lower-Impact Trip to LA

A Lower-Impact ASLA 2026 Starts with You

More than 6,000 landscape architects, students, and industry partners will travel to Los Angeles this September for the ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture. As part of ASLA's Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan, the organization is inviting attendees to take two simple actions this year: contribute to offsetting travel emissions, and plan a lower-emission trip to LA.

Contribute to Carbon Offsets

ASLA has partnered with the National Indian Carbon Coalition (NICC) to offer conference-goers a way to offset emissions from ASLA 2026. The offsets come from the Blackfeet Nation's forest carbon project in Montana, which protects 34 million trees and supports Indigenous-led environmental stewardship, biodiversity, and renewable energy.

Every $45 contributed offsets three metric tons of travel and conference emissions. All contributions go directly toward purchasing third-party verified offsets registered with the American Carbon Registry, and the Blackfeet Nation uses the resulting income to rejuvenate 69,000 acres of forest, reduce wildfire risk, support migratory pathways, and fund renewable energy and social programs.

From 2023 to 2025, ASLA members' contributions totaled more than 8,000 metric tons of carbon offsets. This year, ASLA is asking members to help build on that momentum.

Contribute to Carbon Offsets →

Plan a Lower-Impact Trip to LA

Once you've offset your travel, the next step is planning how you'll get to and around Los Angeles sustainably. ASLA's new Plan Your Trip resources offer low-emission travel guidance and local insight to help attendees make the most of their visit:

• Traveling To & From—Airport, train, and bus options, plus low-emission ground transportation and hotel info
• Getting Around LA—Metro Rail, bike share, the new LAX Transit Center, and car-free ways to explore
• Local Picks—Insider spots, designed landscapes, food, and culture from host chapter SoCal ASLA

Every conference hotel block is within walking distance of the LA Convention Center, so once attendees arrive, getting to sessions doesn't have to cost a single carbon mile.

Explore Plan Your Trip Resources →

Small Choices, Real Impact

While in LA, small habits add up: bringing a reusable water bottle, choosing plant-based options at food functions, taking public transit, and reusing hotel linens all make a difference. ASLA has also taken its own steps toward a more sustainable conference, including eliminating beef from conference catering, donating EXPO materials to local Habitat for Humanity affiliates, issuing an Exhibitor Climate Action Impact Survey, encouraging multi-use flooring in the EXPO, and shifting to a fully digital conference app.

Together, these choices are shaping up to make ASLA 2026 the organization's most sustainable conference yet.

Share your low-emission journey to LA on Instagram—tag @NationalASLA and use #ASLA2026.

We'll see you in Los Angeles.