GREEN ED: “So much about sustainability begins with education,” said Rebecca Stoddard, who owns a Charlotte, N.C.–based event- planning company called Shade of Green Events. “The APEX standards will create a great springboard.”
CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE
THE SUSTAINABILITY GUY: Guy Bigwood, director of sustainability for MCI, led a session at GMIC’s 2011 Annual Meeting. Bigwood is recognized as a pioneer in corporate social responsibility.
It’s okay to take baby steps. Most important is to keep in mind that “there is always something you can do. Small steps have a huge impact when undertaken by many people.”
How Does Change Happen? Indeed, one of the key things to remember about sustainabil- ity is that—like the new sustainability standards themselves —it is a collaborative undertaking, according to Barbara Connell, CAE, CMP, associate executive director of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. “No one individual, or association, society, or corporation,” Connell said, “can do it alone.” GMIC’s Chicago chapter—of which Connell is president
—has organized bimonthly “Lunch and Learn” sessions to help educate members about the new APEX sustainable meeting standards. Many of the chapter’s members served as volunteers in the standards-writing process, Connell said, so
On_the_Web
The Convention Industry Council (CIC) is tracking the progress of the APEX Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards on its website (www.convention industry.org) and will publish the standards—along with other materials related to them—as soon as they become available.
66 pcma convene April 2011
they know what the standards are likely to contain. The group meets at green-certified restaurants that are part of the Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op, and the programs include comments from the restaurant’s chef or catering manager about the facility’s policies toward food acquisition, waste management, and other sustainability issues. “People are really ready to eat this up,” Connell said. “But the larger question is, what are we are doing to get this into the day-to- day mindset of planners?” Denise Taschereau, a co-founder of Fairware, a Vancou-
ver company that sells sustainable promotional products, has a somewhat surprising piece of advice for meeting professionals who are interested in sustainability: Stop con- centrating on that topic alone. Taschereau suggests planners and other industry professionals also become experts in change management. “Until we all understand how people and organizations tick and how systems and organizations change,” she said, “we’ll face failure.”
Barbara Palmer is a senior editor of Convene. The CMP (Certification Made Possible) Series is sponsored by Tourisme Montréal, www.meetingsalamontreal.com.