Sustainability is an important priority for the WMS. Following the 2022 election, we created our Sustainability Committee and this year, the Committee has been working with sustainability consultants, Curve, to develop a plan that will reduce the environmental footprint of both the Congress and the work of the Society and its members. 

Through our work with Curve, we have approached sustainability by looking at four pillars: 

• Climate, energy and transport;
• Food and nature;
• Material use and waste; and
• Sustainable research.

For each pillar, the Sustainability Committee has identified a series of goals and the actions we can take to achieve them. We will be sharing the details of this plan later in the year. 

In the meantime, we are planning to make sustainability a talking point of our 30th annual Congress in Vienna, Austria, this October. We will be sharing information about the sustainability decisions we have taken, particularly in relation to food and waste. 

We are also inviting abstracts on three sustainability subtopics: 

• Sustainable medical technologies or practices for muscle health

• Eco-friendly rehabilitation/research methods

• The impact of environmental factors on musculoskeletal health

Submissions for these abstract topics have an extended deadline. We realise that these areas may not have been key areas of scientific effort for many of our delegates, so wanted to make sure anyone attending WMS 2025 has plenty of time to showcase work with a sustainability angle. For this reason, the deadline for sustainability-related abstracts coincides with the late breaking news abstract deadline of 31st August. 

Anyone who would like to submit a sustainability abstract can do so at any point between now and then, and the Programme Committee will consider all applications in early September. 

Our aim is to showcase the sustainability efforts of our Congress delegates to inspire others to take similar action. We want to show others how small changes in rehabilitation, research and treatment of neuromuscular disorders, if applied by a greater percentage of our audience, could have a significant cumulative impact.