“Environmentally and Socially Responsible Meetings and Events,” a chapter from Professional Meeting Management, Fifth Edition (PMM5), available at the CMP Series link below.
To earn one hour of CEU credit, visitwww.pcma.org/convenecmp to answer questions about the information contained within this CMP Series article, the previous Convene article, and the PMM5 chapter.
The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) is a registered trademark of the Convention Industry Council.
ners and suppliers at the GMIC conference. “Please get away from the penance bit of sustainability: ‘We are going to do less harm, we are going to emit less.’” It’s much more effective, he said, to think of sustainability as a way of pro- viding solutions. For savvy planners, sustainability can be a way to add
value. You might take away one thing—such as disposable cups—but then add something else, Zavada said, such as the pleasure of drinking out of china cups. Who wouldn’t want to trade Styrofoam cups for coffee served in china cups? she asked. “Or eat yummy regional food?” Zavada likens the elements of sustainable practice to the interlock- ing parts of a jigsaw puzzle. “You have all these pieces in place,” she said, “and you learn to make tradeoffs. People are much happier [spending resources] on free wireless than having their sheets changed every day.” While the comprehensiveness of the standards might
seem intimidating—especially for planners who don’t have buy-in from senior leadership—you have to remember, Kennedy-Hill said, that “it’s okay not to do everything.” That’s a lesson that Rebecca Stoddard has incorporated into the very name of her Charlotte, N.C.–based event- planning company—Shade of Green Events—which reflects the fact that there are many different ways to be sustainable, at a variety of levels. Stoddard recently planned a dinner
for a local group of organic farmers who are deeply committed to sustain- ability, and who were able to compost food and other waste on site. At the end of the evening, Stoddard held up a single trash bag—which contained the total unrecyclable waste generated by the event. “It was a bigger bag than I would have liked,” Stoddard said, “but it was only one bag.” But not all of Stoddard’s clients
can achieve those results. For exam- ple, providing locally sourced food
“Please get away from the penance bit of sustainability: ‘We are going to do less harm, we are going to emit less.’” It’s much more effective to think of sustainability as a way of providing solutions.
can be challenging. “Everybody says they want to do it— until they find out there is a 10- to 30-percent [differential] in the price,” Stoddard said. “But you can just take baby steps. Maybe you just do microgreens in the salad, since proteins are what carry the highest costs.” Most important is to keep in mind that “there is always something you can do,” she said. “Small steps have a huge impact when under- taken by many people.”