The Green Meeting Industry Council’s Sustainability Conference wraps up Wednesday at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure. With the release this year of three comprehensive sustainable-event standards—APEX/A.S.T.M. Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards, I.S.O. 20121, and G.R.I. Event Organizers Sector Supplement—the event has focused on helping planners and suppliers understand the guidelines and develop implementation strategies. At a session Tuesday, MeetGreen’s sustainable business adviser, Michael Luehrs, and Jaime Nack, president of consulting firm Three Squares Inc., led an interactive session on how organizations and events can create green teams to lead sustainability efforts. The ideas are summarized in the G.M.I.C.’s new “Guide to Forming a Green Team.”
“How do we get people to feel they are part of a vibrant group that is contributing to the sustained health of an organization or the outcomes of an event,” Luehrs said. "There’s some psychology in all this."
Participants attending the session in Montreal and those viewing it online shared ideas on the types of people that might be included in an event’s green team, including planners, marketing staff, caterers, venue managers, and attendees.
Paul Salinger, vice president of marketing for Oracle and president of the Green Meeting Industry Council, said sustainability goals should be established before deciding whom to include on the team. “Because it’s different for every different kind of event,” Salinger said. "For Oracle OpenWorld, we are trying to accomplish a lot so we have a lot of stakeholders. For a smaller event you might only be concerned with food and beverage in the meeting rooms and maybe some public transportation, and those would be the stakeholders you would want to look for."
Luehrs said it is best when sustainability is fully integrated into an organization’s culture, so participation in a green team for an event is not seen as extra work but rather as the way business is done.
Once the team is in place, leaders should foster an environment where all ideas are welcomed and considered. Actively engaging green team participants will make them more likely to follow through with implementation. Nack added, “Asking questions and getting your teams to think about how they are going to do something actually links them to that plan and to that action step."
