Green was on the agenda at this year’s NEMICE, the annual meeting of the New England Chapter of Meeting Professionals International. In a roundtable discussion moderated by Corporate Meetings & Incentives’ Editor Barbara Scofidio, attendees broke out into roundtables focused on recycling, green gifts and giveaways, environmentally minded site inspections, green hotels and transportation, and adding charitable elements to your meeting.

A common thread to the discussions was that planners are being mandated by their companies and clients to launch green meetings practices, and hotels are being asked by their clients about their recycling and energy/waste reduction practices.

It was also clear that many planners are still trying to feel out how much they can demand from a hotel in their request for proposals. The general consensus was that they should get as specific as possible, not just asking about hotels’ green practices but also referring to the Environmental Protection Agency’s green meeting guidelines in order to make specific demands (for example, for a towel re-use program or recycling bins in meeting rooms).

The NEMICE conference also went green this year, distributing meeting materials via its Web site, eliminating tote bags and water bottles, donating show carpeting, replacing the box lunch with a “deconstructed lunch” of meal choices in recycled packaging, and other such steps.

To see a visual representation of the session that was drawn on-site as attendees summed up the highlights of each table-topic discussion, click on the “graphic recording,” below. This technique captures the ideas put forth through a combination of text and words.

For a list of resources to help green your meeting, you can download the session handouts at www.mpine.org.

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