MeetGreen, the Portland, Ore.–based consultancy that helps organizations plan more sustainable meetings, has unveiled an expanded, user-friendly Resource Kit that includes multiple tools that event organizers and suppliers can put to use right away.
This practical guide is an expansion of an earlier kit and now includes best practices checklists for planners and suppliers, surveys to give vendors about their sustainable practices, an interactive “If One Attendee…” infographic that acts as a roadmap, and even recommended contract language.
Other valuable additions are the user-friendly “ASTM spreadsheets.” MeetGreen, which was a major player in the creation of industrywide voluntary standards for more sustainable meetings, recognized that in their raw form, the APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Event Standards (which may be purchased at www.ASTM.org) can be difficult to decipher. So MeetGreen has translated them into simple standards checklists for assessing and tracking compliance.
These reusable Excel spreadsheets are divided into planner and supplier categories. The planner or supplier simply clicks on a dropdown menu from one of nine major event sectors and selects whether the specification is complete or not. The spreadsheet automatically tallies the tick marks to show the level of compliance.
The Resource Kit also includes more than 12 best practices documents covering the nine areas of meeting management, which, with the ASTM spreadsheets, will help event organizers base site selection on important sustainability factors.
The vendor surveys, covering 12 vendor types, even offset companies, also guide planners in choosing the most sustainable partners for their events, as well as helping to measure on-site practices.
More New Tools
The kit offers a new tool that allows you to engage your attendees in managing their own environmental footprints when attending your event by providing an interactive PDF called “If One Attendee…”
The document measures an attendee’s individual impact by calculating his or her choices at a conference. What if an attendee packs one less pair of shoes or eats chicken instead of beef? The new tool takes a sustainable choice made by one attendee, and calculates the potential impact if all attendees made that choice (based on the total number of attendees entered by the meeting planner).
After you’ve made your vendor choices, contract language is key to ensuring each side is aware of its commitments. MeetGreen offers sample clauses and recommends review and approved by legal counsel, according to its Web site.
The Resource Kit is priced at $199. For more info, visit the MeetGreen Web site.
Sustainability professionals meet for the annual GMIC Sustainable Meetings Conference April 15–17 in San Francisco.
