Dump the three-ring binders.
Drop the name badge because back home everybody knows your name. And, join the new conference social networking site by getting offline and in line for the water fountain.
   
Welcome to green meetings.    
They’re hip, they’re now — and they’re wow when it comes to merging business smarts, strained budgets and social responsibility.


“Professional meeting planners would have to be buried in a hole not to be aware of what is out there — and that it’s the topic,” says Meg Statz, event services manager for Madison’s Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center. “They need to be dealing with it or be discussing it. I don’t think it is going away.”
   
Ask Linda John, executive director of VISIT Eau Claire (formerly called Eau Claire Area Convention and Visitor’s Bureau), where her eight-member staff fields inquiries from environmentally thinking planners looking for similarly minded convention site operators.

“This is a competitive advantage now,” John says. “A lot of these [sustainable] practices can save on the expense side, too.”

True, says Melanie Platt-Gibson, director of Marketing & Communications for the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau Inc. “Being green can lower costs — like the use of water stations, for example – but that’s not always the case. It can require an investment.”

That investment can be a decision by facility managers to implement green operation policies with longer paybacks. Or, it can be a move by meeting leaders to donate leftover goods to a host city’s service club or a non-profit group, as urged by the Corporate Social Responsibility Program started in Wisconsin Dells in 2007.

Or, echoing John, she says “it can be the deal-maker” for meeting planners specifically seeking the convention site boasting sustainability.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle … Repeat
Green meetings may be the hottest trend in the convention industry as corporate leaders and professional planners put saving the planet high on their event priority lists. Common practices have changed as a push for sustainability moved in with three themes: reduce, reuse and recycle.

Consider the conference registration bag. Once a meeting standard, it’s now a memory replaced by e-documents. In other cases, the bag remains but carries a second life. “They’ll make sure the bag is reusable — like at a grocery store,” she says.
Paper also is being punted.

Statz says the usual piles of handouts at breakout sessions and speeches now are online only, or put on CDs for attendees.

Trade shows used to mean compiling the exhibitor’s service kits into big binders. “These are almost all online now,” Statz says. Internet stations also are common. “So attendees can look at handouts that way.”

Bottled water also is showing up on the banned list. “They’ll just ask to have our water stations with recyclable cups,” Statz says. “We did have one group ask to not even have water stations. They wanted their guests to go to the water fountains.”

Recycling bins also must be prominent.

“All of our trash (cans) have a neighboring recycling bin right next to it,” Statz says, adding name tags are left for recycling. 
Statz and crew also recycle the remains of the meetings. “We work our magic behind the doors,” she says. “A lot of people leave materials behind and obviously we recycle that. It doesn’t end up in the trash.”

It’s not just what you know, it’s what you are
Monona Terrace was the country’s first convention center to earn a LEED-EB (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Existing Building) in 2007 from the U.S. Green Building Council.

“It took us 20 months to get certified,” says Jeffrey Griffith, building maintenance supervisor at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed facility. “It is not just a one-time certification. It is an ongoing process where you are continually making improvements.”

For example, the facility’s total energy use dropped by 4.6 percent from 2009 to 2010. It has 100 percent wind-
generated electrical power. Items, including furniture, are purchased based upon the recycled content. Non-toxic green cleaning products are standard. And, it operates a bicycle elevator that gets 10,000 trips monthly.

Often asked to be a conference presenter about green practices, Griffith says the facility’s dedication to environmental policies is in tune with the architect’s link to nature. Both factors make this facility a meeting planner’s favorite. Last year, it hosted 622 events.

“Frank Lloyd Wright was an innovator. He was pushing the envelope,” Griffith says. “It is part of the heritage of the building and that comes into play. We are trying to do something for the long-term benefit of the city and not just the immediate short-term.”

Monona Terrace also is certified as a Travel Green Wisconsin member by the state Department of Tourism. Travel Green promotes businesses working to lessen their environmental impacts.

John’s VISIT Eau Claire office also is certified Travel Green. This fact often prompts questions from planners which John uses to promote local meeting sites big on green methods.

“We have several hotel properties that are into this and it really is a selling point,” John says, noting reduce, reuse and recycle features are most common.

Eau Claire also has its green innovators, such as the Metropolis Resort’s use of a room key card that doubles as a power control. “When you leave and take the card, it powers everything down,” she says. “That’s a real cutting-edge practice and is very much green-oriented.”

Linking green methods with best business practices also is behind the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce’s Green Sustainable Initiative which, much like the Travel Green program, certifies businesses dedicated to reducing their impacts on nature.

John also serves on the Marketing Committee of the Governor’s Council on Tourism, and says plans are under way to beef up the Travel Green Wisconsin program to continue its growth.

Like Griffith, John says the dedication to green meetings and sustainable facility policies mirrors a sense of social responsibility. “It is more about a quality of life,” she says.

That is also the fuel behind the Corporate Social Responsibility Program at Wisconsin Dells.

Platt-Gibson, marketing chief at the Dells bureau, says the corporate responsibility program started in 2007 by urging planners and hosts to ‘make a green contribution’ such as giving leftover supplies to schools or shelters.

As Travel Green Wisconsin grew, the Dells bureau — also Travel Green certified — enhanced the program to answer community needs. “It was a perfect storm,” she says. “Awareness via programs like Travel Green Wisconsin, groups looking for places to donate and to build on their own charitable giving programs — and our brainstorm to formalize it.”
So far, so good. “Groups enthusiastically participate because it’s the right thing to do,” she says. Platt-Gibson provides the list of local non-profits to meeting planners who decide which groups will receive the post-event donations.

It’s happening elsewhere, too.

John says America’s Best Value Inn renovated and donated carpet to an Eau Claire humane society. And the catering arm of Monona Terrace donates leftover event foods to local pantries.

Griffith says Monona Terrace is known for its environmental polices and that has brought business. “It cost us some money to implement our LEED certification. We saw that money come back to us tenfold in the conferences and conventions that we got here,” he says. “Others see that and want to be part of the market. We’re not the only ones any more. And that’s good.”





Green about green meetings?  A Bevy of backup abounds

You want to make your meeting productive for the participants and pleasing to the planet, but are perplexed by that proposal? No problem. Sound advice awaits you. Here are a few places to start.
•  Visit Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s Web site at www.travelwisconsin.com, and go to Travel Green Wisconsin. You’ll see a list of businesses certified as Travel Green. This means they have environmentally friendly operations.
•  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, www.usepa.gov, posts its “10 Easy Tips” to make any meeting more planet-pleasing. A few are:
 •  Go paperless: Use e-registrations, e-mail and a meeting Web site.
•  Think close: Pick a central spot for all attendees or near the city’s airport.
•  Pass the pepper: Use bulk dispensers for condiments at meals.
•  Recycle: Use only recycled paper for printed materials.
    
For the rest, search “green meetings” on the agency’s Web site.

By Joanne Haas

Joanne M. Haas is a freelance reporter, writer and editor living in Madison, Wis. 

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