Friday,June 26th, 2009
In this economic climate, we are all looking for ways to save money and definitely don’t want to do anything that is going to make our event cost any more. Unfortunately, greening lands in that category for a lot of planners. However, there are actually a lot of ways you can still be green and save money.
- Eliminate the use of bottled waters. Attendees tend to hoard them so your consumption, thus your cost, is higher and they create lots of extra waste. Water coolers are proven to be the most cost effective way to go.
- Order juices and other beverages, such as lemonade, by the gallon and not by the bottle. You eliminate the extra waste of bottles and you save quite a bit of money. Using current pricing from a top-tier convention center, a bottle of juice costs $3.25 each. A gallon of juice that can serve close to 18 people is $36 per gallon. The bottled juice for about 18 people would cost $58.50 versus the $36 for the gallon of juice.
- Collect your speakers’ presentations and post them to your website for your attendees to access instead of encountering all of the printing costs associated with having handouts available for everyone. Eliminate paper waste. Save huge.
- Regarding convention signage, there are many ways to cut down on the amount of signage needed thus cutting down waste and your spending.
- Design show look elements that are re-useable year to year.
- Brand the association and not the destination.
- Have sign boards with a clear plastic pocket insert so that you can reuse them show to show.
- Print meeting signage with all of the sessions per week or per day for each meeting room.
- Process all of your registrations through on-line registration only.
- Reuse name badge holders and lanyards year to year by having attendees drop them in containers as they leave the meeting.
- Have a conversation with your event manager at the convention center regarding trash hauling fees. Dumpster hauling fees can get very costly but in many cases, they don’t charge to take away recycling.
- If you provide shuttles at your meeting, cut down on the number of buses you need to pay for by encouraging use of public transportation. Limit shuttle hours to morning and evening hours only. Compile a good ridership history for your shuttle programs so that you know your group and you are only ordering the number of buses you really need.
This is a brief list of ways you can make your meeting greener – for the economy and in savings. What are some of the environmentally friendly efforts of your organization?
Amy this really was a terrific article…well done with a lot of useful tips on how to make your meetings more green!
thanks for sharing!
Mike
[Reply]
Amy,
Great Stuff! To address another challenge and aspect of “Greening”, all of the educational content and collateral print material, here is a link to our green resources area: http://www.omnipress.com/green
One of the useful tools is the “Tree Calculator” – it quickly returns how many trees are saved by using recycled paper!
Here is the link: http://tiny.cc/TreeCalculator
[Reply]
Amy,
Dido on Mike’s Comments. To add to your initiative on “Greening and Saving”, here is a link to eefective ways to “Green Meeting Material” –here is a link to the area on our website devolted to “Greening”
http://tiny.cc/GreeningMaterial
Talking about “Saving”, here is a link to another page that includes a link to a “Tree Saving Calculator”, which upon entering some basic data – it returns the number of trees Saved by using re-cyled paper –
http://tiny.cc/RecycleOffer
[Reply]
Amy,
Dido on Mike’s Comments. To add to your initiative on “Greening and Saving”, here is a link to some effective ways to “Green Meeting Material” – follw this link to the area on our website devoted to “Greening”
http://tiny.cc/GreeningMaterial
Talking about “Saving”, here is a link to another page that includes a link to a “Tree Saving Calculator”, which upon entering some basic data – returns the number of trees saved by using re-cycled paper – -
http://tiny.cc/RecycleOffer
[Reply]