RCMA member Jan Sneegas has seen the future of meetings. She wants you to know that the future is green.

Sneegas, director of general assembly and conference services for the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston, is a pioneer of green-meetings efforts in the United States. She is the sole religious meeting planner serving on the board of the Green Meeting Industry Council, and she is committed to changing the environmental practices of her meetings and the practices of meetings-industry suppliers.

“The time is now for religious groups to be involved in the greening of meetings,” she says. “It's so in line with the values that most religious groups espouse. It's the right thing to do.”

The green meetings movement — trying to make meetings more environmentally responsible — is young.

The UUA began “greening” its meetings in 2003. A group within the church body challenged the leaders to take steps to cut the environmental impact of its meetings, because doing so lined up with the UUA's guiding principles.

“We were challenged to walk the talk,” Sneegas says.

The UUA's leadership accepted the challenge and today is dedicated to doing whatever is possible. That effort begins with site selection — finding cities and hotels that will work with the organization to help it achieve its environmental goals.

The Reigning Champion of Green Meetings

The UUA's 2007 general assembly was held in Portland, Ore., and Sneegas believes Portland right now is the best at providing green meetings. Some cities are green for specific meetings. Portland is green every day.

“You can't beat Portland. We were really bowled over,” she says.

Portland stands out, because it doesn't have to be prodded into making changes for the sake of green meetings; green practices are standard for suppliers and facilities.

Sneegas cites Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis as other cities that rank high on her list for green meetings. In her experience, Doubletree and Hilton are hotels that are committed to improving environmental performance.

Sneegas feels obliged to change the way suppliers view green meetings. It isn't an easy task. “The biggest challenge to green meetings is resistance from suppliers. They believe it will cost more money. In fact, it saves money.”

She's heard a litany of excuses from suppliers for why they can't meet her expectations. Here's a sampling:

• A hotel sales rep said it wouldn't offer a program for reducing resources usage through a volunteer towel-and-sheet program “because that's not what people want.” (Sneegas vigorously disagrees.)

• Sneegas asks that facilities not use Styrofoam, which cannot be recycled easily. A hotel told her they wouldn't meet that request, because it actually was the hotel's policy to use Styrofoam.

• Help Along the Way

  When Sneegas asked about donating excess food from the meeting to local food-shelf programs, a convention center told her it was against the law — when it actually wasn't.

In those cases, the hotels and the city lost potential business: Sneegas took her annual general assembly of more than 5,000 attendees elsewhere.

Even if a supplier agrees to a request and a green requirement has been written into a contract, that does not guarantee that the requirement will be followed. That is why Sneegas brings an enforcer to her meetings.