Green Meetings: Environmentally Friendly Practices for Meetings
by Flo Conner
With the formation of the Green Meetings Task Force, MPI is helping members tread lightly on the environment, one step at a time.
The MPI board of directors established the task force at the request of several planners interested in the positive effect meeting professionals could have on the environment. The 10-member task force is a diverse mix of members and non-members chosen from the meeting industry, including planners, tourism officials and environmental consultants.
As the number, size and location of meetings increase at record speed and tourism becomes one of the largest industries in the world, the impact meeting planners can have on the environment is immense.
"As the world's largest, most diverse and most inclusive association of meeting professionals, MPI can be a catalyst for positive change in the responsible use of resources for organizing meetings," notes MPI President Anna Lee Chabot, CMP.
The effect is felt one act at a time, by one planner at a time. "There are some marvelous individual examples of companies and associations taking a stance on conducting more environmentally friendly meetings," Kathleen M. Ratcliffe, chair of the task force, says. "We hope to make it more the norm than the exception."
It was Ratcliffe's personal involvement in such environmental organizations as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund that led her professional commitment and subsequent acceptance as the chair of MPI's Green Meetings Task Force.
"Everyone should be involved in the green movement, if there is such a movement," Ratcliffe says. "This is the only planet we have and each of us negatively impact the quality of this planet every day. We need to recognize that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our children to safeguard the health of the earth."
Positive Examples
To help meeting planners with concrete examples of the steps they can take, the task force will identify strategies and opportunities to educate planners about how they can make their meetings more environmentally friendly and how suppliers can change their operations to make facilities more "green." In addition, the task force will advise MPI about how it can use its own meetings as role models for meeting planners.
Guidelines and recommendations from the task force will be useful for a wide range of interests and commitments, Ratcliffe says, from those who want to take baby steps to others who want to leap tall buildings when it comes to treading lightly on the earth.
"By offering a broad range, MPI can help those concerned about the financial impact that some of the more aggressive recommendations could have. They will be able to start small," she says. "It will be our goal to offer a menu of choices that our planners and suppliers can choose from to determine their level of commitment."
One task force member who has already done her environmental homework is Coralie Mackie, executive director of Oceans Blue Foundation. The Vancouver-based organization seeks to improve the quality of coastal environments and educate residents and visitors about the environment. To help meeting planners, the foundation publishes tip sheets and advice about green meetings.
Vancouver, like many other popular cities, is struggling with welcoming visitors without sacrificing the beauty they come to see. Tourism to the Vancouver area has reached almost 8 million people a year, and the local population is expected to triple in the next decade.
"You can't put a lock and key on tourism, but you can give people the tools to be environmentally responsible," Mackie says.
The foundation's goal is most easily expressed in the phrase, "Think locally, act locally," a clever twist on the popular bumper sticker, "Think globally, act locally." Mackie believes that global sustainability begins at the local level --- changing one person's behavior at a time.
Change also comes one meeting at a time. As a consultant to an upcoming travel agent convention, Oceans Blue is introducing simple activities that encourage environmental proactivity.
"Our philosophy is to make it very easy for delegates to participate and to make them feel good about their involvement," says Mackie. "For example, instead of giving them bags filled with materials, we're giving them canvas bags that contain the conference program, period. We're telling them, 'Any material you wish to have will be available at the hospitality desk.' Little things, huge difference."
Meeting planners who experience these small victories will then take larger strides, such as asking hotels and meeting facilities to provide green services, including locally grown produce and products."
"It's an evolution of behavior," Mackie says. "And when you think of what being a visitor is all about --- which is experiencing the indigenous culture--- why not experience the local products as well?"
What's Smart, What's Not
A core responsibility for the MPI Green Meetings Task Force will be to develop practical applications to environmental problems. Environmental responsibilities are cloaked in politically-correct language, so there's a lot of hype mixed in with the hope.
That's where task force member John Harrison believes he can make a difference. Harrison, manager of international operations for the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry in Norcross, Ga., will use his science and biology background to help "wade through all the stuff out there" about recycling, reusing and reducing.
"We want to find solutions that make sense. There's a cost benefit to everything we do, whether or not it's an emotional satisfaction from doing your part to save the environment or a bottom-line issue."
Award-winning Examples
Meeting planners are already having an effect on the industry and are serving as role models for others. For instance, an Interface Inc. meeting at Hawaii's Grand Wailea Resort and Spa did more than just win a 1997 Global Paragon award for its innovative approach to incorporating "green" activities into every aspect of the meeting. It provided a "shot in the arm" for the resort, says one of its managers.
"We've remained green since then," says Lance Gilliland, executive director of house operations for the $650 million resort. "We're committed to becoming a living legacy by identifying every possible way to reduce consumption of natural resources and cut waste.
Gilliland has a tough balancing act. On one hand, he has a corporate directive that demands the resort constantly update its hard and soft goods; on the other hand, the resort is responsible for keeping the environment clean and healthy.
But opulence and the environment don't have to be mutually exclusive, Gilliland has found. The 42-acre grounds are beautifully landscaped. They are also virtually chemical free. Cooking oil is refined into a cleaner burning "bio-diesel", and now Gilliland is studying ways to reduce electricity consumption.
"It's not always cost-effective to be green, but I hope to break even," he says. "Either way, the environment wins, and that's the whole point."
But Gilliland draws the line at prompting guests to conserve. "We're an upscale destination, and we're not going to put billboards in guest rooms," he says. "However, it's interesting how effective word of mouth has been. We're constantly asked by guests where the recycling bins are or for tours of the grounds --- we're leading by example and doing it successfully."
Rolling Out the Green Carpet
Whether for environmental or economic reasons, scores of hotels and convention facilities worldwide are becoming environmentally responsible. Here are a few examples of innovative ways they're rolling out the green carpet.
The Mauna Lani Bay Hotel and Bungalows has become the first hotel in Hawaii to be powered by commercial-scale solar electricity. State-of-the-art tiles cover the 10,000-square-foot rooftop, allowing the hotel to harness abundant sunshine, save hundreds of thousands of dollars and help Hawaii reduce its dependence on expensive imported resources.
Eleven global hotel chains, including such big names as Marriott, Ramada and Hilton, have adopted "environmental guidelines" in response to a challenge by Prince Charles of Great Britain for hotels to become more "enviro-conscious." Hotels are "greening up" their rooms with recycling bins, energy-saving lightbulbs and shampoo and soap in bulk containers.
The Montreux Convention and Exhibition Center won an EIBTM environment award in 1996 for a unique system that uses water pumped from the depths of Lake Geneva to help cool the air. The warmed water is pumped back into the lake at different depths to avoid disturbing the lake's ecosystem.
In an environment as arid and inhospitable --- at least by most standards --- as the Australian Outback, conservation is a necessity, not a luxury. The Ayers Rock Resort, where basic commodities such as water, oil and food must be trucked in and garbage trucked out, uses ingenious ways to reduce consumption and waste. The most visible is the way it shades buildings from the fierce Australian sun. Large "sails" stretch high over the buildings, providing shade while allowing natural light.
By asking guests to reuse towels and sheets, Holiday Inn Worldwide saves an estimated 4 million gallons of water an prevents the release of 26,000 gallons of cleaning solution into the environment each month.
The Park Plaza Hotel, which markets itself as "Boston's Ecological Travel Alternative," turns old linens into aprons and plush animals, recycles laundry water and boasts energy efficient windows that reduce heating costs by $84,000 a year.
Scandic Hotels has a property in Oslo, Norway, that uses low-flow showers and centrally located vacuum cleaners to meet its environmental goals of reducing water and energy use by 20 percent over the next three years.
Red Lion Hotels has constructed a $190,000 laundry-water recycling plant in Portland, Ore., that allows hotels to cut water use in half.
The Harmony Resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands constructed units with 70 percent recycled materials and powers them with photovoltaic cells. In-room computers feature interactive software that guests can use to monitor their energy consumption. The resort and its charismatic owner, Stanley Selengut, have won numerous awards for innovative and imaginative environmental design.
Scandinavian hotels can participate in the Green Key program, which recognizes venues that meet detailed environment-friendly standards.
A Green Key hotel must meet 55 criteria, which include installing water-saving devices and water meters, limiting electricity consumption by installing low-energy light bulbs, switching off appliances when not in use, having the correct temperature in cooling and freezing facilities, using cleaning agents and detergents that are environmentally friendly, recycling waste, reducing packaging and throw-away items, providing organic foods, providing smoke-free rooms and areas and ventilating rooms after guests leave.
Flo Conner is a freelance travel writer whose travel writing has appeared in Meeting Professional, the Boston Globe, AAA Going Places, Successful Meetings, W Magazine, For the Bride, Streetmail and other consumer travel and business travel trade magazines.
Published in Meeting Professional.
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