Green Meetings - P2Rx Wiki

By following Green Meeting guides and suggestions, organizations can significantly reduce their environmental impact. Green meetings minimize waste, save energy, conserve water, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on the size of the meeting, the impact of these efforts may vary but all of them help contribute to more sustainable activities.

Meetings and Conventions recently published an article, "Affordable and Green" (October 2009), highlighting green planning savings in virtually every aspect of meeting production.

In the article, Microsoft was noted for saving nearly $500,000 since implementing water coolers instead of individual plastic water bottles at corporate events. The Unitarian Universalist Association held its annual conference in a compact city center conducive to walking and saved $80,000 in transportation costs.

The same issue reported research results that 59 percent of surveyed planners who had implemented green meeting initiatives had realized or were projecting cost savings.

Other specific economies have been outlined by MeetGreen*, including:

• Reusing banners - 40,000 attendee conference, five days: $89,250 savings
• Reducing daily shuttles - 40,000 attendee conference, five days: $60,000 savings
• Reducing handouts - 1,300 attendee conference, two days: $2,000 savings

The list goes on, including savings from local food sourcing, water and energy conservation, and streamlining transportation costs.

For example:

• Suppliers and hoteliers can also realize great economic savings through green meeting practices; for instance, hotels can save 307,914 gallons of water per year, a cost savings of $1,163 annually by replacing 3.5 gallon-per-flush toilets with 1.6 gallon-per-flush toilets.

• In addition to cost savings, green meetings offer environmental savings; for example, using china service rather than disposables for a group of 2,200 attendees can eliminate more than 1,800 pounds of plastic products being sent to a landfill.

Benefits of Green Meetings

• The Economic Bottom Line – Planning and executing environmentally sustainable events isn’t just about being environmentally responsible, they can have economic benefits for the event organizer.

• The Environmental Bottom Line – Using recycled materials, recycling materials used, reusing items and reducing materials used can significantly lessen the environmental impact an event has.