“Green” meetings are all the rage these days, from the U.K. to Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Everyone wants to take part in saving Mother Earth and promoting your company’s environmental policies into your next seminar or meeting serves several purposes at once - reducing and recycling waste while promoting the company as an ecologically concerned entity. So what’s the catch?
There may not be one, except that it is important to make sure that the facility at which the event will take place is on board with the company’s eco requirements. It’s not enough for the site manager to say that papers will be shredded and recycled; nor is it okay for organisers to say that all conference materials will be “green” or that packaging of the supplied items has been cut down to a minimum. A recent article by an attorney who has experience in this area recommends that all of your company’s environmental requirements be documented in the rental contract. Spelling out your requirements will almost guarantee that your requests will be met, whereas just receiving a verbal approval from the person on the other end of the phone may not be honoured.
If you think about, many of the standard environmental requests, such as providing pitchers of water as opposed to individual plastic bottles, saves the facility money. However, unless you ask for that savings to be passed along, chances are you’ll still be paying full price. This may or may not be a big deal, depending on the frequency and size of your meetings. But still, wouldn’t it be nice to be paid back for doing the right thing?
Source: MeetingNews.com
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