9 Standards Destinations Food & Beverage Exhibits Accommodation Communication
NINE x FOUR: The APEX Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards are categorized under the nine industry sectors listed at left; each sector has four dif- ferent levels. But don’t let the number of new stan- dards be discouraging, say meeting professionals who are familiar with them. Some sectors will be more relevant to some planners and suppli- ers than others. And small steps count.
CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE
stuff because they don’t know what to do.” For meeting and event professionals, industry experts
say, the APEX standards can step into that gap, serving as a tool both for educating planners and suppliers and for cut- ting through confusion. “There have been so many different definitions of what green is,” said Tamara Kennedy-Hill, GMIC’s executive director. “The standards will take out some of the guesswork [about sustainability] and create more baseline knowledge.” The standards are also organized in a way that allows
organizations to get their feet wet without drowning in a sea of requirements. The nine industry levels become more rig- orous and complex at higher levels of compliance. At the first level of all nine sectors, for example, requirements include written environmental sustainability policies and
Acronyms to Know
Out of the more than a dozen green certifications available for the meetings industry, which ones do you need to know about? Three have special status by virtue of having been developed by multiple stakeholders and being associated with international standards organizations. These three certifications also serve different but comple-
mentary purposes. “The APEX standards are performance- based and are strong in the metrics and environmental categories,” said Tamara Kennedy-Hill, executive director of the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC). “But the other part of environmental sustainability is a process piece—having a management system, like BS 8901, that supports the imple- mentation of the actions outlined in the standards.” APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange): APEX standards are voluntary meetings-industry standards that are intended to
streamline business processes and create efficiencies. The APEX Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards have been created through a partnership between CIC’s APEX Initia- tive and ASTM International. BS 8901 and ISO 20121: Created by the British Standards
Institute (BSI), BS 8901 was developed for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and defines the requirements for a sus- tainable event-management system. An international version, ISO 20121, is now under development by the International Organization for Standardization. GRI (Global Reporting Institute): GRI is a global network
that has created a model for reporting how public and private entities perform against environmental, social, and governance standards.A draft of guidelines for event organizers is available for review atwww.globalreporting.org until May 16.
established baseline measurements of energy use, waste diversion, and other metrics. The goal was to make each level “not too hard—and not too easy,” Tinnish said. “If you don’t have something to strive for, there isn’t going to be any behavioral change.” The programis also designed to demonstrate clearly the business case for sustainability. At the first levels, Tinnish said, the standards are designed to be cost-neutral—creating no net costs and, in many cases, saving money. The standards also can help planners and suppliers get
on the same page, Kennedy-Hill said, with planners using them to specify their sustainability requirements as part of their RFPs and to make site-selection and other decisions without poring over pages of sustainability policies. Added Tinnish: “It’s an immense opportunity, if you are a planner,