NEW ORLEANS—The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center has earned two major awards from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for major and impactful initiatives aimed at reducing the facility’s environmental footprint. The Environmental Leadership Program Awards, given to the Center in the Community Environmental Outreach category, as well as the Energy and Water Pollution Reduction category, recognize outstanding activities and projects that demonstrate environmental leadership and the pursuit of a cleaner, safer environment.
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center representatives were recognized for their efforts at the Environmental Leadership Program Awards earlier this year in Baton Rouge. To be considered for the awards, facilities were required to report and describe their most impactful projects as well as how the projects benefit their local communities.
The Community Environmental Outreach Award recognizes innovative projects that contribute to enhancing the quality of the environment for the local community. For this award, the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center highlighted an October 2021 project that, as part of a waste audit in pursuit of LEED certification, saw members of the facility’s Executive Leadership Team, as well as staff managers and team leads, sort through over 400 pounds of a representative sample of waste materials. The Center learned that more than half of the total waste by weight was properly diverted from landfills, and followed that up with improvements to waste signage, waste bag color coding, and back-of-house waste sorting to improve the rate of waste diversion. Linda Baynham, the Director of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility for the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, then engaged the community through presentations and webinars in partnership with Life City and Keep Louisiana Beautiful.
For the Energy and Water Pollution Reduction category, the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center was able to demonstrate a deep commitment to the reduction of water and energy use in its facility. They did so by implementing several major energy efficiency projects, which add up to one of the largest energy-saving initiatives ever undertaken in the region. The ambitious energy efficiency upgrades—including an overhaul of the facility’s lighting and HVAC systems—are expected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of kilowatt hours, making the facility significantly more sustainable.
Participated in Energy Smart
As part of these initiatives, the Convention Center awarded $11 million in contracts to small and emerging businesses (SEBs) in the community and participated in Energy Smart, a comprehensive energy efficiency program developed by Entergy and the New Orleans City Council.
“We could not be more happy with the reception of our cutting-edge environmental projects,” said Convention Center President Michael J. Sawaya. “These awards mean a lot to us as it not only rewards the effort of every single person who has worked on these projects, but it also provides a blueprint for meaningful change that other facilities of our size can follow if they want to create positive change in their environment and local communities.”
This marks the second and third awards won by the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in 2022 for their significant efforts in this field. The first came when the facility was given the “Love Your City Award” in the Best Overall category in March. This award highlighted individuals and organizations that assess, improve, and address their impact in their communities through reductions in energy use, contributions to the local economy, commitments to providing equitable opportunities for all, and more. The Convention Center Director of Sustainability, Linda Baynham, spearheaded these initiatives.
“Our success in sustainability is thanks to the efforts from our committed staff who reached these major milestones in energy reduction through planning, design, and management,” said Adam Straight, Vice President of Operations at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. “We also appreciate the strong response from community leaders who encourage us to share our results and best practices with local organizations to help make sustainability a major focus in New Orleans.”
