Meet Green: The Business Case

presented by Amy Spatrisano, CMP

What is a Green Meeting?
A Green Meeting incorporates environmental considerations though out all stages of the meeting in order to minimize the negative impact on the environment.  Green Meeting Report is the Convention Industry Council’s initiative to promote the trend to plan better earth friendly meetings.

Ideas on how to have a Green Meeting

1. Eliminating Conference Bags and handouts.
2. Serving water in pitcher rather than bottles.
3. No pre poured water for dinners.
4. Using china service, or Earth ware products instead of the Black # 6 plastics.

Competitive Advantage for a Green Meeting

• Cost Savings for the company.
• Positive Image for the company, clients, partner and the program.

5 Steps to getting started

1. Establish a commitment.
2. Development minimum guidelines.
3. Communicate objectives to staff and clients.
4. Negotiate Green practices with partners and vendors.
5. Measure the results.

According to the Green Meeting Industry Council, "by the year 2020 the Green Meeting Industry Council envisions a Green Meeting as an activity that:

• Has zero net environmental effect.
• Achieves full integration of environmental responsibility into return on investment analysis for the global meetings industry.
• Is an accepted and standard industry practice, while 'brown' meetings are a thing of the past.
• Achieves economic and strategic business goals and minimizes and eliminates environmental impacts and positively contributes to the environment and host communities.
• Meets minimum green meeting practices as set out by the GMIC.

To help move closer to this vision the Green Meeting Industry Council is working to provide meeting professionals with:

• Education
  The Green Meeting Industry Council promotes green practices globally by offering educational programs in the form of training workshops and online resources. The Council is in the process of partnering with educational institutions to develop an accredited curriculum at the university level for green meetings.
• Resources
  The Green Meeting Industry Council serves as an informational resource to the meeting/conference community. Council board members are involved in a network currently encompassing North America to raise awareness and develop practices for green meetings.
• Certification
  The Green Meeting Industry Council is partnering to support and develop environmentally responsible certification schemes for a variety of meeting industry components.
  

Ideas for Destination VIP to become a Green business and plan Green Meetings for our clients.

1. DVIP to start a Green Team to help review current procedures and offer suggestions to make DVIP a greener company and greener partner for our clients.
2. Continue the recycling program in the office; that includes paper, plastic and glass products.
3. Request that DVIP employees add the following signature on all outgoing e-mails: “Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
4. Ask caters and vendors to use better disposable products that are better for the environment. Ask them what the policy is for recycling. Suggest to the client to go with china or Earth ware products.
5. Transportation: suggest to the client longer wait times on shuttle service to maximize the purchased transportation. Request the Transportation companies to shut off vehicles when waiting for guests.
6. Establish a purchasing policy to buy environmentally friendly products; including ENERGY STAR products, remanufacturing toner cartridges, post-consumer recycled content paper, and recyclable plastics.
7. Locate venues and vendors who are compliant to environmental programs and services.
8. Include in our vendor contacts that the vendor states a commitment to comply with our requests to be environmentally friendly.
9. Reduce paper waste and duplication at DVIP. Reduce the "paper" paper trail in the accounting process. OPS should not get a printed copy of the invoices or final bills sent to the clients. Emails with PDF will work fine. The PDF with the final bill can be kept on Sampson in the program file. Accounting turnover from Sales should consider the same process to minimize the paper waste. Email documents in PDF formats to clients or vendors rather than faxing. Duel computer screens to limit the need to print a document in order review two documents at once. Double sided copies and watching what is really needed to be printed. Print what is only needed for programs.
10. SLCGreen.com is an initiative started by the Salt Lake City, Mayor "Rocky" Anderson, to help promote better ideas and procedures for businesses to be environmentally friendly.

The Core Criteria for SLCGreen.com “e2 Business” is as follows:

• Adopt a mission statement that states our commitment to environment stewardship and communicate it to all employees.
• Designate a team to document the certification and on-going environmental improvements.
• Verify that our business is in compliance with all applicable environmental laws.

The benefits include; the use of the “e2” brand, reduced advertising in local publications, and the ability to attract new customers that share the same commitment to save the environment.

If Destination VIP as a company can do our part to make a difference, we can help rather than hurt the environment. By doing incorporating these suggestions DVIP can become a leader instead of a follower in the Green Meeting movement.

DVIP can leverage these ideas, processes and procedures to our current and future clients, partners, vendors, the media and our industry to show that we are a Green business that cares for the future of our environment.