Corporate and Social Responsibility and Keeping it Green

			Sharon Collins Managing Director, Meetings and Travel Management American Cancer Society

With celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, Kermit the Frog didn’t realize how easy it is to be green. Not green as in color, but green as in being sustainable.

Sustainability has become a major element of the meetings and hospitality industry. Corporate and social responsibility are very important, and awareness and action for sustainable meetings has become an expectation of meeting attendees. These key practices prove good for the environment, save resources, reduce costs and create social benefits.

The Events Industry Council put together its Sustainability Initiative whose mission is to transform the global meetings industry through sustainability. In May 2018, the EIC hosted the first Global Sustainable Event Standards Forum at IMEX Frankfurt. They brought together leaders in the sustainability community to discuss event standards and criteria and how they can encourage adoption of these practices globally.

Recently I was asked by the Atlanta Business Chronicle to talk about sustainability. While it gave me pause for a minute, I soon realized that we are practicing quite a few sustainable behaviors.

Here are a few that I shared being done by our meeting professionals:

· A paperless planning process using a fully electronic sourcing platform with digital proposals and contracts; utilizing online menu resources and; electronic housing and registration management platform/rooming list process.

· During the vendor selection process, we include the following language as part of proposal requests and contracting: Group expects vendor will identify, recommend and use as many environmentally responsible practices as possible and feasible for Group's meeting. These practices should include, but are not limited to, waste management, recycling, energy use, use of renewable resources, and conservation of nonrenewable resources. When working with selected vendor, the planning team checks the vendors’ practices to ensure they are carried out and followed.

· Throughout a meeting or event, we follow the practices of eliminating bottled water, providing recycling bins throughout the meeting, recycling/re-purposing attendee name badges and reusable directional signs.

· Using the meeting app enables our meetings to be paperless and eliminate shipping by not sending materials to the meeting.

· For travel, we encourage direct, round trip flights to get to the meeting city and then ride sharing or public transportation to get to the meeting hotel.

These are just a few instances for sustainability. Share yours with MPI Georgia by using #MPIGeorgia. Together we can all be part of the solution.