Plan Your Meetings

Green meetings step No. 1: Obtain commitment from the top down

As meeting professionals, we are aware of the current focus on green meetings. Many of us are beginning to take the preliminary actions to go green, but we’re hitting roadblocks when attempting more advanced practices.

Roadblocks may come in the form of lack of company funds, internal unwillingness to change behavior or resistance from vendors, among other factors. To help clear these hurdles and move forward with green initiatives, planners must realize the first step to success lies in getting their association or corporate executives to make a commitment to sustainable practices.

For some organizations such as Patagonia, U.S. Green Building Council, etc., corporate social responsibility (CSR) is integral to their identity and mission. Therefore, all their stakeholders and attendees expect sustainable meeting practices. For other organizations, the motivation to adapt these practices is not as obvious, even if there’s an internal desire to do so.

That’s why its important to be clear about “what’s in it for them,” specifically how meeting green can help the company’s bottom line. When presenting the need for green meetings to executives, the following points can be used as incentives:

1. Green meetings can be more efficient and present many cost savings. Take, for example, the savings of providing water stations or water pitchers vs. individual bottles of water (which can cost upwards of $4 a bottle). Or figure out how much money the company could save transmitting information digitally rather than printing sales kits, invitations or other collateral.
2. Green meetings conserve valuable resources. For example, if your company uses reusable signage, it will save money and resources needed to produce those signs as well as divert waste from the landfill (and any charges related to that waste disposal). Think of some other ways your company can reuse materials, and calculate how much money they could save by doing so.
3. Employees recognize their company’s attention to the environment and the world as a positive benefit. Employees are less likely to leave a company they feel good about. Increased employee retension reduces the cost of hiring and training new employees.
4. Many consumers, when presented with a choice between two similar products, will choose the one with “green” properties over the conventional product, if all other factors are the same. So going green could increase marketshare for your company’s products.
5. Adopting a CSR policy can improve a company’s public image and boost the power of the company’s brand, possibly increasing sales and customer loyalty as well as appealing to the very socially and eco-conscious Gen Y market.

Once you get a commitment from your organization’s executives, you are ready to learn the second step to organizing successful green meetings: educating attendees and suppliers, which we’ll discuss next month.

Lindsay Smith is the Sustainability Program Manager for Denver’s Colorado Convention Center and a member of the Green Meeting Industry Council.