If Julie Rawson doesn’t do everything within her power to make her meetings green, she’s in trouble. The Barre, Mass.-based executive coordinator of the Massachusetts chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association says her members tend to get “belligerent about that type of stuff.”
Rawson tries to be as accommodating as possible. “People want to do everything in an earth-friendly way,” she explains. Her members are always on the lookout to make sure “we walk our talk,” she says.
Such strides can be expensive, however. While more green options are becoming available, not all of them are affordable. Add small staffs and a lack of knowledge of environmentally sound practices, and very quickly green meetings can seem dauntingly elusive.
Still, planners who manage to practice what their associations preach are finding that some green practices are worth the extra money they might cost, other measures are easy and cost-free to implement, and a few even save associations money.
Site selection
For Pam Nicholls, training and conferences manager for the Washington D.C.-based Land Trust Alliance, limiting the negative environmental impact of meetings begins with site selection -- and that means more than choosing a hotel with a great recycling program. “We have to have an urban location rather than a suburban location,” she says. Her reasons? Attendees have mass-transit options to get to and around the city, and, once there, they often can walk to restaurants and entertainment venues, eliminating the need for rental cars or buses.
While planners agree that booking green-certified hotels or convention centers would be ideal, the scarcity of such properties and the sheer size of some meetings makes it nearly impossible to do so, says Becky Campbell-Howe, right, director of operations for the Boulder, Colo.-based American Solar Energy Society.
To win the business of the Design Futures Council, which organizes the annual Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design, a hotel must “at least offer the basics,” says Susan Boling, managing director of the Norcross, Ga.-based association. Those basics include not changing sheets and towels every day, using energy-saving light bulbs and water-conserving devices such as low-flow toilets or efficient shower heads, and having some kind of recycling program.
Other measures require a little time and elbow grease but don’t hurt the budget -- and might help hotels or convention centers save money.
Nicholls, for example, will instruct hotel employees (and her attendees) to make sure they turn down the air conditioners during the day or, in the winter, open up window blinds in order for natural daylight to help heat the room.
Rebecca Mebane, director of conferences and meetings for the National Recycling Coalition, based in Washington, D.C., will help hotels set up an effective recycling program if they do not already have one in place.
Though Mebane prefers to use her meeting dollars to support environmentally conscious businesses and cities, she says sometimes going somewhere else actually can do the most good. For her, “the question is: Do we only go to cities that have recycling, or is it a good thing to go to other cities where we can show them how recycling programs work?”
WHAT IS A GREEN TAG?
Beau gust:
Wind power
is one kind
of green-tag
commodity.
A renewable-energy certificate, also referred to as a green tag, guarantees that 1,000 kilowatt-hours of “clean” energy -- solar, wind, biomass, geothermal or hydroelectric power, for example -- have been added to the power grid on the buyer’s behalf. (Accordingly, people who buy green tags often say they are “offsetting” the pollution that was emitted to produce their own electricity by replacing that electricity in the grid with power from renewable sources.)
Green tags essentially subsidize the production of renewable energy, which is sold to utility companies at market rates, despite the fact that it is more expensive to produce than power generated by burning fossil-based fuels.
There are 21 green tag suppliers certified by the Green-e Renewable Electricity Certification Program, run by the San Francisco-based Center for Resource Solutions, and most suppliers act as middlemen between the energy producer and the end user. The Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Environmental Foundation is the only certified nonprofit organization that will allow individuals to designate their green tag purchases as tax-deductible charitable contributions. -- T.I.
Going paperless
Promotional materials, registration and confirmation all can be put on the web, reducing the amount of paper needed to run a conference. “We’ll send postcards with information instead of sending everybody big brochures,” Mebane says. “We still send those, but only to a select few, in a more targeted way.”
Other associations, including the Washington D.C.-based Solar Energy Industries Association, also view printed materials as a source of waste. “We don’t print out speakers’ presentations,” notes Noah Kaye, an SEIA spokesperson. “Instead, we keep them available for downloading off our conference website, and we print the programs on recycled paper.” The association is considering moving to an entirely paperless conference, Kaye adds, following the example set by Janee M. Pelletier, CMP, who engineered a paperless conference last year as director of meeting and convention logistics for the Rockville, Md.-based Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.
Pelletier, now senior account manager for Annapolis, Md.-based Conference & Logistics Consultants, gave a presentation on paperless conferences at ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership’s Great Ideas Conference in Coronado, Calif., in February. “Our decision to go paperless was driven by the desire to give members access to the most current information in a format they could easily save, file and reference later,” she explains.
Reducing the conference’s environmental impact was a bonus. There were other unexpected benefits as well: Pelletier found that putting handouts up on the web drove traffic to the association’s website and helped attendees choose and prepare for sessions. Web-based evaluation kiosks replaced pen-and-paper evaluations, and Pelletier received responses from 30 percent of the 1,712 attendees, up from 5 percent the year before.
Pelletier was astounded by how much money she saved -- nearly $48,000, or approximately 8 percent of her annual conference budget. “We saved $25,000 in printing costs alone and more than $8,000 in freight,” she notes.
Transportation and energy
A popular way for associations to offset their greenhouse gas emissions is to purchase green tags (see box at right), which support renewable-energy projects such as wind farms that produce electricity with far fewer emissions than power plants that burn fossil-based fuels. The tags are an extra expense, but some planners convince clean energy producers to donate them.
Lakeland Electric, a utility based in Lakeland, Fla., donated green tags to offset emissions from tours and shuttle buses used at the American Solar Energy Society’s annual meeting, Solar 2006, held in July at the Adam’s Mark Denver.
All told, ASES bought or received donations for nearly $4,000 worth of green tags to offset the estimated 470,400 pounds of carbon dioxide released into the air as a result of attendee transportation or power used for the conference.
ASES and other associations, including Ceres, a Boston-based network of environmental organizations, investment funds and public interest groups, offer individual attendees the chance to buy discounted tags to offset their own travel, at little or no cost to the association. About 1,500 people voluntarily bought tags for last year’s ASES conference, reports Becky Campbell-Howe, earning a special sticker on their name tags and a mention in the conference program.
As an additional measure, ASES requests that its members carpool, coordinate flights and share cabs from the airport, or even share hotel rooms. Those suggestions not only encourage attendees to book within the block, but they also foster community, if for just a few attendees at a time. Between 50 and 60 people made such arrangements last year, Campbell-Howe says.
RED AND BLUE GO GREEN
Dan RubenAssociations with an environmental mission aren’t the only leaders of the green meetings movement. The Newton, Mass.-based Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions was formed in 2002 to help green the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Republication National Convention in New York City.
CERC, an independent organization that raised more than $160,000 to fund its operation, worked closely with the cities and convention organizers to make sure the events were the most environmentally friendly conventions of their kind in history.
Among CERC’s achievements:
* Acquiring 1,274 green tags to add renewable energy into the power grid to match the amount of electricity used at the conventions;
* Using hybrid buses and a transportation company that provided hybrid Toyota Priuses;
* Setting up a low-emissions fuel cell, which acts like a battery, to power much of the media pavilion in Boston.
“Our actions will definitely have an influence on future political conventions,” notes CERC’s executive director, Dan Ruben, who finally released a detailed case study of the project in May (online at
www.cerc04.org). He says he hopes other meeting planners will learn from his success and continue to press the hospitality and meetings industries to reform.
“In my experience, there’s nothing that moves these [hotels and convention centers] more than meeting planners who demand environmental best practices,” says Ruben, who now serves as the executive director of Boston Green Tourism, which was created to continue and expand CERC’s mission. -- T.I.
Food and beverage
Opting for china or glass instead of Styrofoam or plastic, a buffet instead of boxed lunches, cloth instead of paper napkins all are standard green practices. Reducing waste is good for the environment and for hotels or convention centers that have to pay to send garbage to landfills.
At the Greening the Hospitality Industry meeting held in Adelphi, Md., last October, the Green Meetings Industry Council (based in Portland, Ore.) served condiments in bulk containers, shade-grown coffee, sustainable seafood and other organic food. For her part, the National Recycling Coalition’s Rebecca Mebane says she saved a significant amount of money -- and inorganic garbage -- at the event by serving water in pitchers instead of individual plastic bottles.
Several planners try to buy food from local farms, because when comestibles are hauled long distances, the transporting vehicles emit more greenhouse gases. And fresh fare is appreciated, insists the Land Trust Alliance’s Pam Nicholls. “People are happier when they’re eating healthy food,” she says.
For off-site events, planners might be able to find restaurants endorsed by the Sharon, Mass.-based Green Restaurant Association, a nonprofit organization that helps restaurants implement a minimum of four environmentally friendly improvements in each year of membership. GRA executive director Michael Oshman says his association currently recognizes 220 green restaurants in 20 states. He encourages planners to visit www.dinegreen.com to find green restaurants near a meeting site, but he also urges passing the message along. “Call up a place and say, ‘I want to do business with you, but we really need you to be a certified green restaurant,’ ” he says.
At the convention center
Increasingly, green-minded suppliers are working with environmental associations at major shows. For example, Stetson Convention Services Inc., based in Pittsburgh, is a general contractor and decorator responsible for the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council’s annual Greenbuild International Conference & Expo and Green Festival (an environmental expo). Stetson also works with the Edgewater, Md.-based National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association, among other clients, and is a supporter of the Green Meetings Industry Council.
Craig Rodgers, a national sales representative for Stetson, says the company’s green measures include using butcher paper instead of vinyl for exhibit booths (“vinyl is the worst thing on the planet,” he says), biodegradable bags in trash receptacles and energy-saving light bulbs. Stetson commonly uses carpeting made out of post-consumer materials and recycles the carpet after the shows.
Some products, Rodgers admits, including the special carpet and environmentally friendly hard wall paneling, can be very expensive -- sometimes more than double the cost of non-green options. But other measures come at nominal expense: Rodgers encourages planners to ship freight by rail, if possible. Though it typically takes longer to do so, he says associations might save a little money -- and carbon emissions.
Challenges and opportunities
Budgetary constraints continue to trump environmental concerns, even for earth-friendly associations. As a result, completely green meetings remain an unrealized goal for most planners.
“I would love to get as close to a zero-waste stream as we can,” says ASES’ Campbell-Howe. “However, our rule of thumb is we’ll go up to 10 percent more than conventional costs” to fund green practices. “After that,” she notes, “we need to find sponsors or we need to seriously consider how much the environmental impact is and just how big of a benefit there will be.”
Affordability requires a cost-benefit analysis. According to Donna Carter, conference coordinator for the Bowie, Md.-based National Association of Environmental Professionals, if her conference becomes too expensive to attend, her association risks alienating itself from its members. Thus her allegiance has to be to her bottom line first and the environment second.
An additional barrier to green meetings: Planners can’t always ensure that their green directives will be respected by attendees or venue employees.
Sandra Staples-Bortner, director of conferences and meetings for The Wildlife Society, based in Bethesda, Md., admits, “We are not the most proactive” at implementing green practices. That might be because one of her experiments in reducing waste -- using ceramic mugs for coffee instead of disposable cups -- was foiled at a meeting when attendees carried the mugs out of the convention center and into the connected hotel and eventually left them in the wrong building. “That put an end to that,” she says.
“Getting the word down to the staff doesn’t always work,” adds Mebane, who once negotiated with a hotel not to change sheets or towels, but the housekeepers didn’t get the message and changed them anyway.
Sometimes, however, attendees do step up to the plate. “I’ve had attendees load recyclables in their car and take them to the recycle place themselves,” says Campbell-Howe. “If I tell them [a hotel] doesn’t do this type of recycling, they will literally set up a station themselves and take it in.”
Planners can lead the charge, too. The Design Futures Council’s Susan Boling says the Fairmont San Francisco sped up its compliance with the brand’s environmental standards to accommodate the Sustainable Design Summit -- evidence of the group’s clout.
Boling says it used to be hard to find a hotel willing to comply with green requests, “But now, they’re waking up and are aware of what people want. It’s not nearly as difficult as it was 10 years ago.”
And planners expect to see many more hotels begin to standardize green practices, a development that will relieve them of some of the burden of creating environmentally responsible meetings.
“I think it’s going to happen, I really do,” says Nicholls of the Land Trust Alliance. “It’s common sense, isn’t it?”
Natural Choices
Brands Take a Stand
Earth -- and Budget -- in the Balance
20 Ways to Save at Meetings
Amy Spatrisano
had one client
who saved $25,000
using pitchers instead
of bottled beverages.
Organizations don’t have to go into the red to make their meetings -- and the planet -- greener. A number of low- or no-cost tactics can make meetings more earth-friendly. Following are 26 affordable tips, courtesy of the Washington, D.C.-based Convention Industry Council’s Green Meetings Task Force; green meetings advocate Amy Spatrisano, CMP, of Portland, Ore.-based Meeting Strategies Worldwide; and “green” caterer Cathy Conway, president of Avalon Catering in Atlanta.
Meals and breaks
1. Use the good stuff. Whenever possible, choose “hard” nondisposable tableware, including china or glass plates and cups, glasses and metal utensils. These items often are standard at hotels or conference centers, at no extra cost. For off-site events, be sure to specify your preference to the caterer. According to Cathy Conway, the cost of renting china and glass dishes and glasses is minimal -- about the same as using disposable items. “However, the labor costs may be a bit higher, as cleanup is more extensive and time-consuming for nondisposable tableware,” she says.
Rent realtableware
instead ofdisposables,
says Cathy Conway,
but prepare to pay
a bit more for labor.
2. Be pitcher-perfect. Instead of putting out individual bottles of beverages, serve water, soda, juice, iced tea and even beer from pitchers. The measure not only will reduce the amount of plastic waste but can save the organization money, too. According to Amy Spatrisano, one client saved $25,000 over the course of its conference by making the switch.
3. Get luxurious with linens. Complement tableware with nondisposable cloth tablecloths and napkins, rather than paper versions. They’re more elegant, as well as more earth-friendly.
4. Go family-style. Serve condiments and spreads (cream, sugar, butter, cream cheese, mustard, ketchup) from nondisposable containers rather than individual packets. This not only helps the environment, but will trim costs for those items by about 50 percent.
5. Waste not. There’s always some extra fruit salad or tuna wraps, no matter how carefully the F&B is planned. Why not donate these leftovers to a local food bank or homeless shelter, rather than toss food out? The property, convention center or other local supplier might already have relationships with local charities or be able to recommend one.
Meeting venue
6. Go natural. Choose a meeting facility that uses natural daylight to brighten its meeting rooms and lobby areas.
7. Reuse signage. For recurring events, don’t include a date or theme; this way you can use them again, recommends Amy Spatrisano.
8. Bin this. Find out if the meeting facility has recycling bins in the meeting, registration and event areas. If not, ask for extra garbage bins and use signage to mark them for recyclables.
9. Play the rename game. Recycle all badge holders at the end of the event; have staff or volunteers collect them after the final session. For events that have a large number of repeat attendees, consider recycling name badges in a similar manner.
10. Go portable. When setting up the on-site registration area or an Internet cafe, try to use laptop computers; on average they use about 10 percent less energy than desktop computers.
Accommodations
Although a number of hotel chains and properties have green policies in place (see “Brands Take a Stand”), for properties that do not have a set program, or if the planner would like the program to be more extensive, the following tips can be easily implemented at no cost.
11. Change less. Ask the housekeeping staff not to change the sheets and towels daily unless requested by the guest. This policy is standard at a number of properties; many distribute cards instructing guests how to comply with the practice.
12. Save toiletries. Ask the property’s housekeeping staff not to replace amenities daily. Better yet, choose a hotel that supplies its bathroom amenities -- soap, shampoo, bath gel -- from refillable dispensers.
13. Reduce energy by day. Ask the housekeeping staff to close the blinds (cutting down on heat from sunlight) and turn down the heat/air condition-ing during the day, while participants are busy attending meetings.
Communications
14. Go online. Shift any written communications (rooming lists, room layouts, event orders, settlement of accounts and other contractual documentation) to e-mail whenever possible.
15. Print the green way. Be sure all handouts are printed on two sides. The most earth-friendly printing materials are vegetable-based ink and recycled paper. Better yet, go paperless by making handout information available on your website.
16. Trim those brochures. Put all of the conference and registration material online, or reduce the size of registration brochures and make the rest of the information available online.
Trade shows
17. Lower the dial. Ask the facility to reduce heat or air-conditioning during move-in and move-out times.
18. Build better booths. Encourage exhibitors to use wood from sustainable sources; avoid using toxic glues and paints; design exhibits that can be reused; and use local labor and supplies as much as possible.
19. Choose wisely. Select a facility that already has a comprehensive recycling program in place. Be sure to let exhibitors know how to follow the center’s recycling rules. Make sure the recycling bins are well-placed and clearly marked as such.
20. Be tabletop smart. Decorate tabletop stands with plants (they can be rented or, if purchased, donated afterward); offer refreshments like fair-trade organic coffee, teas and chocolate; limit on-site promotional kits (offer to send the information electronically). Use electronic badge scanners to obtain attendee profiles.
21. Dangle carrots. Offer incentives to exhibitors who follow green practices. Says Meeting Strategies Worldwide’s Amy Spatrisano: “We have one client who is implementing a rewards program for exhibitors whose booths use environmental components and who participate in the recycling efforts; they earn additional points toward the next year’s booth selection. In addition, all participating exhibitors are entered into a drawing for a free booth.”
22. Give responsibly. Hand out promotional products made of sustainable materials or recycled glass; steer clear of the non-green plastic and vinyl tchotchkes and magnets.
Out and about
23. Air patrol. Work with ground transportation operators whose vehicles are run on bio-diesel fuels.
24. Get walking. Eliminate shuttle bus transportation by selecting hotels and meeting facilities that are within walking distance of each other.
25. Give back. Arrange an activity for guests or spouses that gives something back to the host community. Some ideas: Clean a local park, beach or school yard. For ideas, consult with the suppliers, local government or the local convention and visitors bureau.
All in writing
Include your environmental requests or expectations from the initial request-for-proposal stage throughout the course of negotiations, and be sure to specify the agreed-upon practices in all of your final contracts. -- LISA GRIMALDI