The Greening of Meetings and Events

More than ever building owners and managers are implementing sustainability into their operations and facilities, but there may be another opportunity to increase sustainability goals: greening meetings and events.

Whether you are hosting a meeting at your facility or off site, or exhibiting at a conference, you can take steps to make your meeting activities more sustainable. Greening a meeting or event is multifaceted. First, the event host needs to determine what level of sustainability to focus on. For example, should the focus be on reducing emissions or other areas of sustainability or both?

Looking at emissions caused from an event or meeting, these are the areas to consider:

Event emissions

• Building energy use — energy use associated with the meeting space
• Travel to and from the event
• Local transportation, including shuttle service
• Meals — energy use associated with meal preparation
• Hospitality — energy use associated with hotel rooms

Event sustainability is more than reducing emissions and includes reducing waste and water and energy use, recycling, and utilizing green purchasing. Here are suggestions for making your event or meeting more sustainable:

Event Sustainability:

• Have available easy-to-use recycling bins for attendees
• Reduce waste —
  • Avoid paper handouts
  • Avoid bottled water, instead use pitchers or dispensers for water
  • Use reusable plates, cups, utensils, napkins and table cloths

• Purchasing — if you can’t offer reusable plates, cups, etc., they should be made out of recycled content, recyclable or compostable (implement as many of these options as you can)
• Food —
  • Use locally-produced and/or organic food
  • Offer vegetarian options
  • Compost food waste

• Provide public transportation information to attendees to make it easy for them to travel to and from the meeting/hotel/airport, etc.

If a meeting is offsite, choose a site that is close to the majority of the attendees and/or close to public transportation to help reduce emissions caused from travel. If the meeting is onsite, consider who should attend and incorporate video conferencing to minimize travel. If attendees need hotel accommodations, suggest nearby hotels that already have a sustainability program in place. Look for hotels that implement the “Reuse Towels and Linens Program”, turn off lights and heat when rooms are empty, have recycling bins in the rooms as well as in public places, and utilize green cleaning.

If your building has sustainable actions already in place, such as water efficiency measures and green cleaning, these actions enhance sustainable events and meetings onsite.

If your organization is exhibiting at a conference, the negative impacts of exhibiting may result from the emissions from travel and shipping and the waste created by exhibit components that are not reused or recycled. Event organizers can engage exhibitors in event sustainability by educating them about sustainability in various ways or by requiring certain sustainability actions. One example would be the 2011 Greenbuild International Expo and Conference event. Exhibitors were required to follow mandatory exhibition green guidelines, such as providing a sustainability policy, requiring new booth materials and booth maintenance materials to be zero-VOC or low-VOC, any new graphics to include sustainable elements, minimization of print materials and giveaways, and avoidance of polystyrene as a packing material for shipping.

Here are examples of the amount of greenhouse gases that might result from an event (emissions per attendee are variable):

While many emissions offset programs focus solely on greenhouse gas emissions, it’s important to consider both climate- and health-related emissions caused by events. Each type of pollution causes its own particular set of environmental and health problems, all of which should be offset.

Emissions associated with events affect both climate and human health:

The other piece of the puzzle is determining how much of the emissions will be offset and how. Will only greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions be offset? Will GHG and emissions that affect health be offset?

• Offset options:
  • Carbon offsets – offset only GHG emissions
  • Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) — offset both GHG emissions and emissions that affect health

• How are the emissions offset?
  • Most offsets are purchased by the event organizer. For some events, attendees are given the opportunity to offset their share of event emissions. Donations may also contribute to offsetting event emissions.

Voluntary standards are being developed to help guide people who are planning meeting and events to make them more sustainable and to help report on sustainable meetings in a comparable way. For example following are some voluntary standards:

• The Global Reporting Initiative Event Organizers Sector Supplement was launched in January 2012 (www.globalreporting.org)
• The APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Events Standards (www.astm.org) and the ISO Event Sustainability Management Systems (www.iso.org) are expected to be completed in 2012.

Leonardo Academy’s Cleaner and Greener® Event Sustainability Program provides a way for conferences, meetings and other events to reduce their negative environmental impacts and communicate their environmental commitment by quantifying and offsetting the emissions caused by their events and assessing the overall sustainability. Leonardo Academy calculates the footprint for all of the emissions associated with each event, acquires offsets, and certifies achievement. (www.cleanerandgreener.org).

Regardless at what the level you choose to green your event, meeting or exhibit, taking steps toward event sustainability is a way to expand the sustainability of your overall operations.