The book Sustainability 101: A toolkit for your business is a manual that has close to one hundred suggestions for businesses that want to go green. It indeed provides businesses with means through which they can begin their journey towards environmental conservation and sustainability. The manual addresses issues such as the efficient use of energy, transportation, efficient waste management practices, the role of businesses in community service and the best strategies to ensure environmental sustainability. The issue of Green meetings has been addressed in a separate chapter which discusses in detail the role that Green meetings play in environmental conservation.
The article Green meetings: Hosting environmentally friendly events is a scholarly article published in the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing. This article talks about how Green meetings and events can make positive environmental contributions, save money for the organizations and enhance community philanthropic activities. The article makes use of the water bottles to demonstrate how Green meetings can achieve the above stated goals. The author argues that since water bottles are plastic in nature, they normally take many years to decompose and therefore Green meetings should avoid using them and instead should use water pitchers and cups.
Meet and Go Green is a paper written by the Director of Conferences for the National Recreation and Park Association. The author argues that Green meetings can have positive environmental impact by engaging in certain practices from the beginning to the end of the Green meetings and events. Such practices include recycling and composting to reduce the amount of waste generated from the meetings, reducing the use of disposable items, reducing the consumption of energy, making use of goods that have post-consumer recycled matter and serving domestically produced foods (Everett, 2009, p.53).
Green meetings is a newspaper article authored by Cottee and published in The Times. This article begins by stating that meetings organized by businesses or organizations can either be environmentally friendly or wasteful. The decision lies in the planners of the meetings and events. Such decisions range from the kinds of foods that are served, the types of utensils and containers that are used and the methods used to collect the waste generated from such meetings. The author then proceeds to give a number of recommendations that can minimize the amount of waste generated.
Sustainable meetings report debuts is a report of the Meeting Strategies Worldwide, a green meeting management company based in Portland. The report is totally dedicated to green meetings’ policies, technologies and human interest. This report shows the trends of green meetings which have been on the increase in the recent past. The report also states that planners of green meetings have increased significantly owing partly to consumer awareness and partly to economic conditions. The persistent economic downturn has forced many businesses to adopt different policies and strategies which are sustainable in order to cut down on costs (Alderton, 2009, p.16).
The need for green meetings arose when people became aware of the adverse environmental conditions currently facing many countries throughout the globe. Changing climatic conditions and increased hunger, drought and floods have forced people to go green on particularly every issue including meetings. Green meetings are meetings, events or conventions in which negative environmental effects are minimized through various strategies from the beginning to the end of the meetings. Everett (2009, p.53) argues that, “it all starts in the planning stages and must continue through every step of the event – from site selection to cleanup.” Various strategies of achieving sustainability and minimizing environmental harm have been suggested by different sources.
Green meetings utilize the least amount of paper possible. This is achieved by the use of technological devices such as email to communicate with members rather than through brochures or banners. Communication is also done through the meetings’ website where all the details concerning the meeting are posted. In addition, members of green meetings do not use note pads to take down notes. Instead, they use their computers or they save the information in floppy disks and other storage devices. These strategies help to minimize the amount of paper used thereby help to conserve the environment by reducing the number of trees that have to be cut to produce the needed paper (Novacovici and Woofter, 2008, p.57).
Planners of Green meetings take precautions in the type of food served and the types of containers used to serve the food. Green meetings carry out careful logistics to ensure that the amount of food served is adequate enough for the members yet not excessive. This helps to minimize the quantity of left over foods and ultimately the amount of waste generated. Most importantly, the planners make sure that the utensils used to serve the food are recyclable rather than disposable. This means that once the utensils have been use, they can be cleaned and used for future meetings. Green meetings also avoid individually wrapped food as much as possible. This is because great amounts of papers are needed to wrap food for each member. This is not only harmful to the environment – through cutting of trees – but also generates large amounts of paper waste which cannot be recycled easily. Water is an important component of meetings. To ensure that the water used is environmentally friendly, planners of green meetings avoid serving water in plastic bottles which take many years to be recycled. Instead, members are advised to use water pitchers and coolers to keep the water cool and cups to drink water from. Each member uses one cup to take water. This reduces the number of cups used in a particular meeting and ultimately reduces the amount of water used to clean the cups (Cottee, 2007, p.16).
Energy is an important requirement for any meeting. Energy is used in the lighting process and to keep the electronic devices running such as computers and microphones. However, the amount of energy used in a meeting can be minimized. Green meetings minimize the amount of energy used in different ways. First, planners of Green meetings select and use only rooms that are not dark but which instead receive adequate day light. This eliminates the need to switch on the lights during the day which in turn saves energy. Second, members of Green meetings take precautions of leaving equipment turned off whenever they are not in use. The heating and air conditioning systems are also kept at a minimum to conserve energy (McDermott-Levy, 2008, p.389).
Green meetings cannot achieve their environmental conservation objectives without taking into consideration the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from vehicles. Planners of Green meetings ensure that the members of the meetings do not use their personal cars as much as possible (Cottee, 2007, p.16). This is done by ensuring that the venue of the meeting is close to the public transportation systems or it is a walking distance from the place where the members are residing. As a result, members can either walk to the meetings’ venue or alternatively use the public vehicles.
Green meetings are indeed environmentally friendly. They conserve the environment and reduce the amounts of waste generated. They use items that are easily recyclable and avoid those that have to be disposed of after use. They use adequate amounts of food thereby reducing waste. Paper use is kept to a minimum and technological devices are used instead. Green meetings are on the rise and it is hoped that such measures would greatly conserve the environment and reverse the damage that has already been caused (Alderton, 2009, p.16).
References
- Alderton, M., 2009. Sustainable meetings report debuts. Successful Meetings, 58(2), 16.
- Cottee, P., 2007. Green meetings (Final 1 Edition). The Times, p.16.
- Everett, D., 2009. Meet and Go Green. Parks & Recreation, 44(5), 53-54.
- McDermott-Levy, R., 2008. Green meetings: Hosting environmentally friendly events. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 39(9), 388-389.
- Novacovici, A. and Woofter, J., 2008. Sustainability 101: A toolkit for your business. New York: Lulu.com.