GREEN MEETINGS 25 in planning and implementing sustainable events... and it works without having to go to the supermarket for herbs or EVOO( extra-virgin olive oil).
Here’ s how it works and how it may help you:
n“ Plan”: Line Up Your Key Ingredients Let’ s say you are planning a two-day national event with approximately 500 participants and you want it to be greener.
Your first step will be to create a specific goal like“ We want to reduce
CO 2 emissions by X percent” or“ We want all catering for the event to be green”.
From there you’ ll want to define what sustainable principles, objectives and needs will drive these efforts, identify the key people who should be involved, and honestly discuss what issues may arise.
Once this initial plan is down on paper you will be able to more easily drive decisions for the event such as considering local suppliers, identifying public transportation options, highlighting venues with renewable energy features, and suggesting sponsors who will share your vision.
Before you move on to the next step of“ Do”, however, you’ ll also need to assign and clearly communicate roles and responsibilities and ensure everyone understands and is bought into the plan.
n“ Do”: Prepare your“ Kitchen”, Then Get Cooking With a good plan in place and initial communications started with your“ green team”, it will be tempting to jump right in and start turning up the heat.
However, before proceeding to implementation you’ ll need to take a few more prep steps.
First be sure to assess how the skill levels of the internal and external team members line up with your goals... or not. You may need to provide resources or training at your end. At the provider, supplier and venue ends you might need to ask for changes or clarifications or secure added commitment levels to support your goals.
Second you’ ll need to dig deeper into how you can tactically achieve your planned goals e. g.: Are you going to create & package specific transportation recommendations and programmes with a greener bend? What menu choices will you make to ensure that more locally grown foods are used? What will your print documentation policy be, and which elements will you offer only online to engage and educate participants?
Also in the“ Do” phase: before you go live with the plan, you should establish a measurement and tracking process to decide how to gauge success or identify areas for improvement. This Q & A process will help determine how actions will be controlled throughout the event supply chain and by whom.
Finally, once these planning elements are in place and you have evaluated the general feasibility of your goals and ideas, it’ s time to get cooking and start executing against the plan.
Now that it’ s“ go time” it will be paramount to establish clear and regular lines of communication internally and externally to keep things moving in the right direction.
At the same time you will have to continue creating, maintaining and sharing documentation during every part of the execution.
Ongoing communication and documentation of your green meetings process will help build continuous understanding and buyin, create more effective progress individually and collectively, flag areas for redirection earlier, and share new or better ideas that can be adopted to get even stronger green results.
n“ Check”: The Proof is in the Pudding... or the Minestrone The third phase is the analysis and comparison phase.
Here you will look at how your target goals for your green meeting measured up to the actual performance of the event.
For example: how many print documents were actually used vs. posted online? What percentage of food used was locally grown in the end? How much recycling took place during and after your event for food waste or documentation, signage etc.? How much energy was saved at event hotels due to sustainability measures?
Be sure to take a systematic and holistic look at the all the elements that went into or against your green goals at the show – planned or not.
This is also a great time to develop new criteria for future events, which were not considered this time around.
n“ Act”: Refining the Recipe Now that you are post event you should feel great about the green gains you’ ve made, but you should also take a hard look at how, when and where issues arose and why, and how goals were prevented from being reached. It is also a great time to do a reality check on your original goals, and how you might handle things differently going forward.
For example, do you want all your show hotels to be within walking distance from your event next time to reduce your CO 2 footprint? Do you want to increase online