PORTLAND, ORE.—Meeting Strategies Worldwide (MSWW) has launched the MeetGreen Calculator, a gauge for environmentally friendly meetings. The Web-based calculator is available to anyone who wants to measure the environmental impact of their meetings and conferences.
To assess an event’s environmental impact, the MeetGreen Calculator compares practices of a specific event against the greenest alternative practices. Results provide a benchmark for future events and a comparison with other green events. For example, environmental practices include use of locally produced food, selecting meeting sites where attendees can walk or use mass transit, and diverting a significant portion of garbage by recycling and reuse.
The calculator is part of a suite of products and services that includes tools to use throughout the planning process to lessen detrimental environmental effects and a program to certify that an event is following the best green practices. Together they are called MeetGreen and constitute the first move towards an industry standard for environmentally friendly meetings.
Groups such as the Sierra Club, U.S. Green Building Council, Globe Foundation of Canada, and Business for Social Responsibility have hired MSWW for the approach now quantified with MeetGreen.
“By working with Meeting Strategies Worldwide, we have attained a clear understanding of the level of environmental management we achieved with our recent World Urban Forum 3,” says Ginny Stratton, Globe Foundation of Canada. “Now we have a solid basis for improving our environmental performance in the future. We are ecstatic to know that the host of practices we employed resulted in the highest possible MeetGreen rating and hope that the results of our efforts will create a legacy for future organizers of the World Urban Forum.”
Green Meeting Best Practices
World Urban Forum and other events can make a difference in innumerable simple ways. Instead of providing costly and wasteful bottle after bottle of water, an event following MeetGreen best practices provides water in large containers and cups that are reusable. Instead of treating food leftovers as costly garbage, a MeetGreen-certified event likely treats leftovers as a donation to a local food bank. The strategy can result in reduced costs and always translates into quantifiable dividends for clients, attendees, local communities and the environment.
Meeting Strategies Worldwide for more than a decade has taken an uncommon approach to event planning and consulting to achieve outstanding results for its clients and the environment. The company made a name for itself as North America’s pioneer in green meetings by looking for every opportunity to eliminate waste from its clients’ events—a practice that also means gains for the environment.
“All organizations should be interested in the benefits of reducing waste,” says MSWW Principal Nancy J. Wilson, CMP. “Now MeetGreen is available to identify and stymie waste associated with meetings—whether in the form of energy, natural resources or finances.”
MSWW partner Amy Spatrisano and Wilson designed MeetGreen to respond to demand from an increasing number of corporations and other organizations incorporating waste reduction and healthy environmental practices into their strategies.
“MeetGreenSM is the latest entry in a growing collection of building blocks for organizations striving for sustainability,” said Spatrisano, CMP, who is also president of the Green Meeting Industry Council. “Like LEED for green buildings and IEEE 1680 for green computers, a label for meetings that follow environmentally healthy practices now is available in MeetGreen.”
In addition to the calculator, MeetGreen provides additional avenues for improving events. The MeetGreen Toolbox helps organizations use events to achieve further environmental benefits by providing suggestions for contract language, vendor policies, a list of green meetings resources and instruction on inspecting sites.
Ultimately, third-party vetting by the MeetGreen Certification Program allows organizations to tell the world they are setting the standard for environmentally friendly events. An event can receive MeetGreen certification only after a MeetGreen observer verifies practices firsthand.
Go to MeetGreen.
