Even as talk of financial green dominates headlines, environmental green continues to take on a crucial role in the meetings industry. In a time of limited spending and corporate responsibility, the clear message is that green meetings fall directly in line with efforts by companies to conserve and scale back.
Though there are still skeptics who assume extra efforts involved in greening a meeting will cost more, experts involved in organizing green meetings are promoting the contrary.
"What I say to people is twofold: One is I think it can take a little more thought, but not necessarily more money to green your meeting and event," says Deborah Popley, associate director of the Delta Institute, which creates, funds and implements programs that promote a healthy environment and a strong economy, working with partners from across the Great Lakes region. "Many of the most fundamental things you need to do save money in the long run."
Popley cites a number of examples, including eliminating bottled water, a practice that has been documented repeatedly as a large savings. Reducing paper use is another area of savings.
"Many of the meeting planners I talk to are able to trace back savings by eliminating a lot of their printed material, from marketing to educational presentations to handouts in general," she says.
Issa Jouaneh, vice president of strategic meetings management and solutions for American Express Business Travel, leads a team of planners who include internally trained green meeting experts.
Recently, American Express helped coordinate a four-day meeting with 1,200 attendees. An estimated savings by using distilled water rather than bottled water added up to about $65,000 (14,400 bottles). The same client saved an estimated $9,000 in paper use by offering meeting information electronically. In total, the company saved over $73,000 with its green efforts.
"I think with the current economic conditions there are a number of other distractions as it pertains to meetings that this topic has been moved to a secondary focus," Jouaneh says. "But with our clients, we work them through a three-step process that starts with communication. The second step is capturing data and measuring results, and the third is sharing and celebrating savings."
Rhonda Brewer, vice president of channel management for the Maritz Travel Company, 80 percent of whose business comes from the meetings market, says green meetings are still in hot demand, and the company offers planners its own set of check points for going green.
"I think planners have the knowledge to do simple things," Brewer says. "Even if a client doesn’t have a high interest, what are the things you can do that are still green that don’t cost anything?"
Specific examples include pitchers of water rather than bottled, electronic boards with agenda information, using a website to post event materials, using recycled centerpieces, putting out recycling bins and offering items like pens and paper from recycled materials.
As green meetings become more standard practice, the supplier side is stepping in line with the green agenda.
"There were a lot of cost issues when the movement first hit and there is still the thought that greening means having to buy special items—biodegradable service wear, special biodegradable pens," Popley says. "A lot of that kind of response has diminished as people’s budgets get tighter. They realize greening is conserving the resources you already have. You don’t have to buy something unusual to look green."
According to Popley, prices are also becoming more comparable for products made of recyclable and renewable material as the market expands and the economy changes.
"Suppliers have come around and addressed the current economic situation by being competitive," she says. "Some items from corn plastics, bags made of hemp or some fiber renewable material used to be much more of a premium, but are becoming much more comparable. Planners are in a good position now to negotiate better prices."
Food Costs
One sticking point can be the food and beverage option, which can be more expensive when turning to organic foods. However, Popley asserts that using locally sourced food offers a cost savings.
"If you work with your caterer you can find ways to introduce local or organic food without costing more," she says.
While organic food and beverage choices can, in some cases, drive up the price for a meeting, green meetings experts say it is more important to look at overall costs.
"I see some pushback about green costing too much," says Tamara Kennedy-Hill, executive director of the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC), an organization composed of both planners and suppliers. "They are looking at one element rather than ‘where can I save.’ If they are putting on a meeting and looking at food and beverage, and it costs more to do organic, they think they can’t do a green meeting. But there are different ways to evaluate how to work within your budget. Suppliers are more willing to work with planners. Planners have to ask and use their buy-in power. Even for smaller companies, there are many more choices than in the past."
Creative solutions include not putting a year on the event signage, so it can be reused the following year.
"There are different strategies—reduce the amount of use, reuse as much as possible from one event to the next," Kennedy-Hill says.
Setting Standards
The GMIC is currently involved with APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange) and ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) in releasing a set of green meetings standards to help define the term, which is slated to be released by the end of the year. "It’s a robust process of government and industry working together to define green," Kennedy-Hill says.
The standards will address nine stages of the planning process, such as site selection, food and beverage and exhibitions, each one with its own question set and environmental matrix.
"Standards will help," Kennedy-Hill says. "It’s confusing right now. One hotel says it’s green and you go to another hotel and it has very different practices. They will help planners to know what questions they should be asking—ways to start looking at different areas of impact, get reports, know from year to year how they are improving."
Kennedy-Hill poses that once a matrix of green standards is in place, tracking environmental and cost savings will be easier.
"CFOs always want to see numbers. I think that creates the buy in. Large corporations like Oracle are looking at their environmental impact," she says. "They can start tracking each area to know the cost savings and get positive press. It can also demonstrate economic value."
Success Stories
Oracle touts its own success on how it saved money at its San Francisco-based OpenWorld 2008 Site Program, and promoted its results at the recent Green Travel Summit in Newport Beach, Calif. The company provided recycling, a hotel supplier with a towel and sheet reuse program, and china or biodegradable service ware at meal functions, and used online methods of communication rather than printed means.
Aside from conservation benefits, which included saving 965 trees by reducing printed materials and using 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper, there were large cost savings.
Oracle calculated that it saved $11,600 by providing online schedulers, demo requests and maps, and not pre-mailing name badges. Other savings included eliminating 500,000 plastic bottles by providing water stations instead of bottled water, with an estimated savings of $1.5 million.
Also, the company estimated $135,000 in costs saved by replacing existing non-sustainable signage with a cardboard-based alternative that was recycled. The company will also be able to reuse 45 percent of its banner signage for future events. Oracle reduced its number of transportation coaches by 11 by expanding walking routes and adjusting shuttle frequency, and it generated 11 media articles about the green initiative published within 30 days of OpenWorld.
James Forberg, COO for Unicomm, an event management company based in Milford, Conn., experienced a vast learning curve in setting up the Green Travel Summit itself. Some of the green cost-savings tactics included making sure lights and televisions were off in hotel rooms and leaving personal messages in the room rather than leaving collateral at the front desk.
"The hotel partner, the Fairmont Newport Beach (Calif.), is a good example of a sustainable property," he says. "Fairmont offered us use of a channel on their television service, which was used to leave information about the meeting electronically."
The hotel also offered a download center rather than paper handouts. At the lunch, organic and locally sourced foods were served, along with an organically grown strawberry plant as the centerpiece.
"A local elementary school came in, and when the meal was over the group presented plants to the school, and the kids went back to plant them," Forberg says.
Green Gouging
Despite all the successes, many planners still have to convince their clients and CEOs to conduct green meetings, according to Amy Spatrisano, principal of Portland-based MeetGreen, formerly Meeting Strategies Worldwide.
"The number one reason people resist it is the belief it will cost more," she says.
"What I’m finding is that both third-party planners as well as some suppliers are using green as an excuse to up-charge."
Kim Carlson, author of Green Your Work, has first-hand knowledge of being overcharged in setting up a green meeting at a hotel property in Minneapolis.
"We were trying to green as much as possible for a fancy event evening," Carlson says. "We wanted to do local or sustainable food and we ran into some difficulty for pricing. They wanted to charge 50 to 60 percent more, which was shocking to us; we thought maybe 10 or 15 percent. There was a huge premium we think because they didn’t have the vendors to source it from. That can be an issue for a venue if one planner wants green food, sustainable or local. The event gets charged more. We were surprised because Minneapolis is very progressive and is ground zero like Portland is for green."
Carlson suggests shopping around when looking for a venue that can host a green event.
"It would have been much more cost effective if they had it set up already," she says. "Look around for venues that are skilled and have done it before. If it’s a hotel or meeting facility, they will talk about it on their website."
Purchasing Power
MeetGreen released a white paper report late last year emphasizing that the onus is on companies for responsible purchasing. The report states: "Meeting professionals have huge purchasing power: use it wisely and conscientiously… Buying closer to the location of your meeting helps protect the environment, reduce shipment costs and can support local small business most affected by the economic downturn… The Green Meeting Industry Council has members who can help planners and suppliers source responsible promotional products and meeting supplies (www.greenmeetings.info)."
According to the report, organizations that are committed to sustainability are finding they are not just surviving; they are thriving, partly due to higher employee retention and an increase in consumers wanting to do business with them. It also cited a recent survey of corporate travel managers by the National Business Travel Association, which indicates that nearly 30 percent incorporate green issues into their travel policies and that nearly 25 percent prefer green meeting suppliers. Another 30 percent will use hotels in the future that feature environmentally friendly amenities and practices.
One cost-cutting measure that inadvertently has green value is virtual meetings.
"I think in our industry there is so much fear around that people don’t want to hear that word," Spatrisano says. "What I would suggest is that people embrace virtual meetings.
As technology improves, we should be assessing the ‘who, what, where, when and how’ of meetings," she adds. "Does virtual work for this particular meeting or should we meet, or do a combination? It’s also the financial part, the carbon footprint part. If I were a convention center I would look at technology for ways to create a community. That’s very future looking."
