20 Totally Doable Ideas for Greener, Kinder, Better Events

It was a small group at IMEX America’s Smart Monday session on better, greener, and kinder meetings and how to plan them. Nevertheless, attendees at the two-hour deep-dive session were fully engaged, coming up with dozens of ideas for maxmizing the triple bottom line—people, profit, planet—in planning events.

Led by green meetings pioneers Nancy Zavada, CMP, founder and president, MeetGreen, and Mariela McIlwraith, CMP, CMM, president, Meeting Change, the session began with an overview by Lizzy Paulson of the corporate social responsibility and sustainability efforts she has undertaken recently as events director for Time Warner Cable.

“Where you are in your personal sustainabilty journey is perfect,” Paulson said. “I had zero sustainability event experience a year and a half ago.” But she read about a company that had incorporated green practices into its events and she contacted the event planner. “We became international penpals,” Paulson said. “She told me to go to the Green Meeting Industry Council Web site. I looked at the Standards and I panicked!”

Such is the reaction of many planners: Going green seems overwhelming. Where to start? Paulson began with GMIC’s certification program. (Get more information here.) But you can start smaller than that, just by incorporating a few ideas into your planning process, and then a few more, and then a few more. Here are 20 actions to consider:

1. Use signage without dates, so it’s reusable year after year.

2. Work with the chef at your meeting hotel on sourcing food locally and sustainably.

3. Ask about food rescue programs and whether the hotel already has a partner. If not, there are two organizations that can help you donate unused food: Rock and Wrap It Upand Second Harvest match agencies with potential food donors. Nancy Zavada notes that this can be an organization’s legacy in a destination—once a venue understands the process of coordinating food donation, they will be more willing to do it with other groups.

4. Reduce food waste by not pre-setting salads. If timing is an issue, set only 80 percent of the meals and then serve the rest as needed.

5. Tell your venue that buffet containers need not be kept full until the last person is through the line. Communicate this to your attendees: Explain that you won’t be keeping everything topped up in order not to waste food.

6. Publicize all your efforts. In your registration confirmation e-mail, include a bullet point list of sustainability initiatives happening in conjunction with your event.

7. Give attendees credit. Have a sustainability slide show scrolling as attendees enter the ballroom for your general session. Emphasize the results of your efforts in a way that makes them feel part of it: You are saving XX swimming pools worth of water, or enough energy to power XX homes.

8. Have a few different containers for recycling badge holders, and dedicate each one to a particular charity. The number of holders recycled dictates the number of dollars that will be donated to that charity. This adds an extra element of purpose—and fun—to recycling.

9. Inclusivity is part of corporate social responsibility as well. Nancy Zavada has a client that rents wheelchairs and scooters to do site inspections from those different perspectives. It’s not just about accessibility, it’s about sight lines, temporary objects that may impede someone, meeting room setups with aisles that are too narrow, and many other things you might never “see” otherwise.

10. Do you know the special needs your attendees have? What about your non-attendees? Ask people why they don’t attend your meeting: Maybe there’s an accommodation you can make to broaden your reach.

11. Site selection starts with the destination: Is there public transport from the airport? Is the “conference community”—hotels, convention center, shops, restaurants—walkable?

12. Can you encourage attendees to walk instead of taking cabs everywhere? The Omaha CVB is doing just that at IMEX this week, by handing out pedometers and challenging attendees to rack up their steps!

13. Check a venue’s certification, but be sure the certifying third party is reputable. LEED, the certification program of the U.S. Green Building Council, is the most well known. There’s also Green Seal, an independent nonprofit that promotes the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services.

14. With the continued flood of e-RFPs to hotels, said Mariela McIlwraith, including all your sustainability questions initally could delay hotels’ ability to respond to you. Instead, she suggested, ask one question: Who can I follow up with to get my sustainability questions answered? If that property ends up on your short list, you can then dig into the green details.

15. When you do a site inspection, don’t neglect the back of house, and be nosey. In the kitchen, look at food containers. Where are things coming from? Where is recycling sorted? What cleaning chemicals are being used?

16. Sustainable event sponsorship can be a “win, win, win, win” situation, said Zavada and McIlwraith. When sponsors fund green initiatives, their brands get a reputation boost; you get their sponsorship dollars and meet your green goals; your attendees get the full meeting program you’ve planned; and, of course, the planet wins as well. Some specific sponsorship ideas:

17. Have a company sponsor a coffee break and serve Fair Trade coffee. When Zavada did a program in New York City in 2014, Fair Trade coffee was far too expensive for her to have served. With the sponsor, attendees got the sustainable coffee while the sponsor got great recognition.

18. Get a sponsor for your Sustainabilty Report for the meeting.

19. Offer sponsorships for a CSR activity. Zavada invited computer programmers tovolunteer for a hackathon to develop some software for a Boys and Girls club. Lizzy Paulson said this idea is perfect for companies today. “They are looking for skill-based volunteer opportunities because it increases employee engagement.”

20. Remember that big initiatives can start small. Some organizations may resist dumping the printed programs they’ve mailed out for decades. For one of her clients, McIlwraith audited the mailing list and reduced the number of programs by 30 percent just from that first step. The following year, registrants had to opt in to get the program. And by the third year, the program was eliminated without a problem.

Great Green Resources
• Use the TerraPass carbon calculator to determine the environmental impact of your event, your business, or yourself.

• Invest in the MeetGreen® Calculator to measure your event’s sustainability success: Were specific practices related to air quality, waste management, water conservation, energy efficiency and environmental purchases requested, available, and implemented? What were the final quantitative outcomes? Reports allow you to benchmark against previous years’ data and against other events.

• Check out the “Beginner’s Guide to Sustainable Events” at MCI’s sustainable events blog, “Less Conversation, More Action.”

• Read about the big successes IMEX America has realized in the area of sustainability and encouraging sustainable practices among its exhibitors and attendees. Read case studies of previous winners of the IMEX America green awards.

-MeetingsNet