Achieving event sustainability goals isn’t entirely in the hands of the event planner. It’s typically the venue that recycles waste, sources the F&B, handles food donations, and monitors the building’s heating, cooling, and lighting systems.
If you have certain sustainability standards you expect the hotel or convention center to meet, it’s not enough to take their word for it. Your contract needs to be specific, says Joshua L. Grimes, Esq. of Grimes Law Offices, LLC—including clear expectations, a means of verification, and a remedy if the venue falls short.
If sustainability is important to a group, the organizers “should put in the contract, and have a means of verifying that it’s done,” says Grimes. For example, he says, verification could mean that the venue supplies documentation that it purchased food from sustainable growers, separated and recycled waste, or used electricity from a clean-energy supplier.
“The wrinkle,” says Grimes, is that there should also be a remedy in the contract if the venue fails to meet the contracted goals; that’s the part that’s often missing. To give a “green clause” some teeth, Grimes offers three ideas for counteractions to have in the contract for when a facility doesn’t do what it says it will do:
• Have the venue agree to purchase carbon offsets of a certain dollar amount.
• Have the venue agree to meet the sustainability goal they missed for your organization for another group of comparable size they’ll be hosting in next three to four months and provide you with documentation.
• Establish a monetary remedy where, instead of the venue giving the group the money, it donates to a sustainability-focused organization of the group’s choosing.
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