Corporate Meetings are Going Green

Green meetings represent an interesting shift in meeting planning, and this is part of a larger travel trend known as green vacationing. It is probably not the kind of thing that everybody will pick up on, but I thought I would share some thought on the growing trend around planning green meetings. What is a green meeting? These are meetings intentionally planned around the ideal of environmental responsibility.

So what does a green meeting entail? For the most part, a green meeting involves a bit more planning and conscious deliberation around products, supplies, food and beverage, and printing materials. You still want your meeting or event to be a success, so you have to take care of all the details you normally need to consider. The facilities need to be top notch and a great experience for your guests, so several organizations have come up with some basic guidelines for planning your green meeting.

From Bluegreenmeetings.org come the following 10 tips to help plan what they term your "bluegreen meeting":

1. Create a written statement that establishes an environmental policy for the meetings, and gather acceptance from either your client or your own company, depending on if you are a planner or an in-house resource

2. Use paperless technology. Electronic registration, online advertising, email, and multimedia presentation technology can all help cut down on the amount of printing you do.

3. Meeting close to as many speakers and delegates as possible helps reduce the amount of travel required to get to a meeting venue. Along the same lines, "choose a venue and hotel that are close to the airport and within walking distance of each other."

4. Practice the 3Rs. Ask your venue and your hotel to provide easy and accessible reduction, reuse, and recycling services for paper, metal, plastic and glass.

5. Instruct your food and beverage provider to use bulk dispensers for sugar, salt, pepper, cream and condiments.

6. Choose hotels that offer linen reuse programs and bulk dispensers for shampoos and soaps.

7. Include vegetarian meals, and include meals planned using local, seasonal produce.

8. Use recycled paper and vegetable-based inks for all printed materials. Double-side all printed materials

9. Instruct the meeting venue to shut off air conditioning and lights in all rooms when not in use.

10. Let delegates, speakers, and the media know about your BlueGreen meeting to encourage participation in your efforts.

Going green is growing in popularity. Hotels, airlines, tour operators, meeting venues, and conference centers are starting to offer more and more services catering to the desire to have a low impact meeting, event, or vacation. If this sort of thing is important to you, take advantage of the growing availability of these services.

Perhaps you don't plan meetings at all but you are still interested in this trend. Look for my post on green vacations and being a "green guest" next time.

Patrick Soch, Senior Marketing Manager

Comments

[Shayna]

I know some people in groups like NARI and RCA and they've said some things about how the organizations are trying to think of ways to go green. Someone in one of the groups has a business that focuses on building green.

[Marie]

Hi everyone! I’m fairly new to meeting planning and am currently planning a Caribbean meeting in St. Thomas. I’ve read about the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort and wanted to reach out to other meeting planners who have had meetings in St Thomas. Did you find all the essentials – airfare, hotel costs, etc. reasonable? Does anyone know of any website resources that are good for meeting planning? Are there any other message boards, forums or groups that I can learn from other meeting planners on?

Thanks a lot,

Marie