When the UUA jumped into greening its meetings, Sneegas was afraid that “we wouldn't be able to do it well enough.”

Then they found a fearless sheriff on the green-meetings frontier. Her name is Amy Spatrisano, a founder of the Green Meeting Industry Council and the owner of a Portland company that helps organizations to move forward with green initiatives.

Amy is the UUA's green enforcer, the one who packs plastic gloves.

Spatrisano assured Sneegas that any steps the UUA took would matter. Beginning in 2004, the UUA contracted with Spatrisano to help it achieve its green goals.

Before meetings, Spatrisano provides support with contract and site negotiations. During meetings, her on-site management makes sure that the suppliers are doing what they promised to do.

This is when the plastic gloves are used: “She goes through the garbage bins to make sure they're doing what was contracted,” Sneegas says. During meetings, Spatrisano also can be found teaching host facilities what can be done to minimize environmental impacts.

After the meeting, she produces an audit that gives a detailed analysis of what was accomplished.

Sneegas encourages newcomers to bring in outside help, like Spatrisano. “It's their job to stay on top of these things as they change. I don't have the time to do it. But if you choose not to hire someone, there's a lot of information available.”

(The Green Meeting Industry Council is a good place to start: www.greenmeetings.info.)

Spatrisano's services cost the UUA between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, but Sneegas says that money is recouped through savings that Spatrisano achieves in contract negotiations. “She's worth every cent that we pay her.”

Sneegas says that the reaction of her meeting attendees to the environmental changes that the organization has made has been “nothing but positive.”

In its registration materials, the UUA offers attendees the opportunity to counter the carbon they use in attending a meeting by donating to an organization that purchases carbon offsets.

In 2007, more than a third of its assembly attendees made the suggested $6 donation — an increase of about 10 percent from 2006. It's an improvement, but as with the meetings, there's room for growth.

Sneegas would like to see the day when all suppliers make green practices standard operating procedure.

“Suppliers are willing to do green things for us as a customer, but we want them to continue to do it when we're gone,” she says. “We're not there yet, but that day is coming.”

How much of an impact can you make? At the Unitarian Universalist Association's first, modest attempt at being environmentally sensitive, and with minimal planning, the following quantities were recycled (from a five-day meeting with more than 4,000 attendees):

• Plastic: 150 lbs.
• Cardboard: 300 lbs.
• Aluminum cans: 50 lbs.
• Landfill waste: 13,746 lbs.

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