MeetGreen's Carole Garner answers participant questions about sustainability.
Questions were submitted during the Green Meetings Essentials Webinar.
1. Do you have any vendor/supplier recommendations that produce green meeting items like name badges or give-away items?
We have several vendors for these items. Specifically for registration, we like to use Kleertech for lanyards and a great company in The Netherlands called Parthen Meeting Services with an innovative option for name badges.
2. I run the sustainability program at a convention centre and find it difficult to inform many of our clients about our green practices. How do you recommend best connecting with clients and exhibitors to educate and engage them in the greening process?
A one-page info sheet that covers current energy/ water use, waste management, infrastructure, and departmental practices is the most helpful to those of us specing out facilities. It is the benchmark piece that whether toe off of to see what other practices might be possible. This one-pager should be a link from the main page your website. If it is something that you have to dig to find, that tells the planner that it might be deprioritized at your facility.
The Oregon Convention Center does a good job of keeping Sustainability at the fore with the link always at the top of the page. http://www.oregoncc.org/sustainability/
3. Serving organic, local items may sometimes increase F&B costs. How you recommend we control these costs for bigger receptions?
This is always a big challenge. First, offer more vegetarian items as they tend to be lower cost and infill with a few items that contain meat or fish. As well, work with the chef to find ingredients that are locally sourced (ideally within 100 miles of the meeting venue). This will save food miles and tell a great story about reducing carbon footprint. And, if you are sourcing local ingredient that are in season this should not translate to higher costs.
4. There are some parts of the country that prohibit the donation of leftover food due to contamination (food poisoning, etc.). how would one get around that?
I hate seeing food being tossed. Please always refer your partners back to the US Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996: http://feedingamerica.org/partners/product-partners/protecting-our-partners.aspx. There is really no basis for the claim that food will be contaminated and thereby, a possible legal liability from the donor.
5. What are you asking the hotel to serve water in if not a glass. Would it be paper? plastic?
Both of which are not eco friendly either. To clarify, ask the hotel to serve water in pitchers instead of pre filling water glasses. This will reduce the amount of ice needed (energy savings).
6. Regarding bulk sugar, salt, etc. would this option be sanitary and create waste since the left overs would need to be tossed?
It is absolutely as sanitary as serving creamer in pitchers, for example. The amount of leftovers is the “lesser of evils” compared with the energy and resources needed to produce the individual packets. You can also ask that condiments not be refilled if there is only 15 minutes left in a break, for example.
7. Where can we find a comprehensive, downloadable sustainability checklist to use when taking a facility tour?
MeetGreen offers this in book and toolkit format. As well, here is a page with links to many different resources: http://meetgreen.com/free-info/links/. Our toolkit can be found at http://meetgreen.com/meetgreen-tools/resource-kit/.
Green Meetings Industry council also has resources http://www.gmicglobal.org/
8. Where can we find the resources for the contract language?
See above links!
9. I've been with my current company for 6 months and they do not want stop using paper evaluations at conferences. They tried online surveys once and only captured a fraction of responses. They do individual surveys for each conference breakout session, which consumes a lot of paper. Any suggestions of how to convince them to go digital?
I would love to find success stories from other conference groups that have made the change to digital. I checked with a long-time client of ours that just migrated to online evaluations post conference as well as leveraged their conference app on site for immediate feedback. They made sure to have a slide on the screen at the end of each breakout session with a reminder to fill out the evaluation on the conference app.
Incentives also work and call attention to the evaluation- do a drawing of an iPad and send push reminders through your conference app to encourage participation.
10. Is there a credential that identifies a green meeting planner? If so, what is it or what program/credential is most recognized?
There is not currently a personal designation for planners however the Convention Industry Council (CIC) rolled out sustainable meeting standards through their Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) initiative. http://www.conventionindustry.org/standardspractices/apexastm.aspx
