Why? Because WE Can…..Green, Corporate/Citizen Socially Responsible AND Sustainable

"Radical Transparency offers a way to unleash the latent potential of the free market to drive the changes we must make, by mobilizing consumers and executives to use data to make more virtuous decisions." Daniel Goleman, from Ecological Intelligence, How Knowing The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything

There are so many facets of transparency, reporting and tracking available to us that is why WE can and should be making informed, virtuous decisions. Transparency is popping up everywhere. http://www.goodguide.com/ has a phone application that allows us to scan the product code of an item we are interested in buying in the store, and, read its environmental standings in comparison to its competitors so that we can make an educated purchase. Soon there will be eco-ratings to assist us with all of our purchases. All of the hotel brands now have Departments of Sustainability in which they are studying how to roll out "greenitiatives" corporate wide. I encourage them all to be as transparent as goodguide.com so that we can track their efforts right into our RFPs.

Buildings and then transportation are the two largest sources of carbon emissions. When we hold meetings and events outside of our daily lives we have many sources of information to help us make intelligent, informed and responsible choices. Regarding meetings and events; the third largest component of our carbon footprint and sustainability at our meetings and events is our catering. I admire the saying, VOTE WITH YOUR FORK. In the case of planning an event we are dealing with a multitude of decisions. If we are holding a two day event for 100 attendees, that's six meals, times 100, equaling 600 plates of food not to mention all of the snacks, cups of coffee, and hopefully you have all gotten it figured out by now; glasses of water…..*-) Partnering with our chefs takes on an enormous responsibility. Imagine the difference between purchasing local organic over herbicide nurtured vegetables from half way across the globe, and, compare enjoying the local tap water compared to flying in plastic bottles of airlifted spring water from afar. Many culinary teams are taking pride in their locally sourced seasonal cuisine and your guests will too. The attendees might even remember how their grandparents served that same dish at the very same time of year. WE can ask all of the chefs and conference service managers to source locally, put it in our RFP and make it known from the start of negotiations. Does this nuance with the culinary team take a short time longer, yes; however, think of the satisfaction that your team will receive from supporting local farmers and culinary artisans. This is a virtuous cycle.

Below are a couple of examples of embracing all of the possibilities of green sustainable meetings for your reference. Make 2010 about the power of the possible to move your meetings and events to a new sustainable level, why, because WE can!

• Oracle's Open World Conference and Open World Live are great examples of greening business while embracing technology. OW Live is a great website that had live streaming video during the conference with a Twitter feed alongside the video. You can view the archived videos at http://tinyurl.com/yaxgohx Oracle's team is awesome. I have had the chance to meet Jodi Morrison, Oracle's Senior Director Technology & Operations and I follow Paul Salinger's tweets, Paul is the Vice President of Marketing at Oracle. In my eyes Paul and Jodi with the Oracle team are at the leading edge of green meetings. Their events are fascinating to track.
  
• Check out this article about the success that Natural England had with their 2009 conference with the integration of seven sites across England for their annual conference of 2500 attendees. This is a stellar example of utilizing video conferencing, the web and audience engagement tools. http://meetingsreview.com/europe/news/view/23734
  
• Here is some Eye Candy – Enjoy a gorgeous video meditation on Sustainability by Peter Corbett: http://tinyurl.com/ybr46g3
  
• This is an awesome video tribute to the power of social media. http://m.hellotxt.com/wzGO
  

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009, and the 2009 Changemaker Award from Corporate Meetings and Incentives Magazine.

Water on Fire! Blog Action Day 2009

Calling All Green Citizens 10/15/09

"Clean" energy sounds so very appealing, and a positive step to combat climate change. Well, we are being sold the biggest cover up in the name of replacing "dirty oil" with "clean" natural gas.

THERE IS NOTHING CLEAN ABOUT THE CURRENT PROCESS THAT IS USED TO EXTRACT NATURAL GAS. While natural gas burns cleaner than oil, that, is all that is better for us. The extracting process called, "fracking", boils down to this dirty little secret. It takes stripping the earth of all habitat at the well site, drilling 1-2 miles deep and sometimes horizontally from there, and, then fracturing the shale layer with a solution of more than 250 chemicals, sand and water. This explosive procedure not only releases the natural gas so that it can be extracted, it also releases methane that leaches out to the surface thru every crack and crevice of the surrounding earth to the extent that nearby residents can light there water on fire! Some have been advised to keep their windows open so that their home doesn't explode! The Energy Act of 2005 cleared the way for companies to use this outlandish procedure without any consequences. They don't even have to remove the chemical slurry from the site. There are numerous sites where the surrounding drinking water is poisoned for miles. IS THIS THE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING, NO!

Please follow some of the links below where professional reporters and concerned citizens are raising awareness about this scandal.

http://www.propublica.org/series/buried-secrets-gas-drillings-environmental-threat

http://damascuscitizens.org/

http://earthworksaction.org/PR_EPApavillionDrinkingWater.cfm

http://www.youtube.com/GasDrillingTruth

21 of 31 drilling states have no regulations specific to hydraulic fracturing

4 of 31 drilling states have detailed regulations guiding hydraulic fracturing

Only 10 drilling states require that fracturing chemicals be disclosed

Zero states require that the volume of fluid left underground after fracturing be recorded

Sources: State Oil and Natural Gas Regulations Designed to Protect Water Resources, May 2009, U.S. Department of Energy, office of Fossil Energy, National Energy Technology Lab, and the Ground Water Protection Council

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.

 

Green, Sustainable and Teaching One Family At A Time

Calling All Green Citizens 10/12/09

The following is an inspiring note that I received from a very good friend about his family when he learned that I was raising awareness around, Green, CSR and Sustainability. It's so great to hear about everyone's efforts, and, most impressive to hear when it's happening at home, school and the greater community.

Great to hear back from you, and I applaud TheGreenBoriin! I'm glad to know you are championing this cause. We are very much into Green too. We are raising our kids in a certified Green household http://getgreencolumbus.com/ where we have two large recycling bins for all plastic, glass, metal and other recyclables that is picked up each week with our garbage. We take all of our paper to a bin at our elementary school (about a brown grocery bag a week) and the school receives money for recycling. For the five of us we try to only have one bag of garbage per week. We use canvas bags at the grocery instead of plastic bags. My wife and I are both Scout leaders so we try to practice environmental stewardship and "Leave No Trace" with the kids we come in contact with. We ride bikes allot and selected our house in an area that might be a throwback to the 1950s. We can walk/bike to five parks, the library, schools, Dairy Queen, village green where there are summer concerts, and a large grocery store. Our kids are growing up with alternative means of transportation (walk/bike/city bus) versus the usual suburban mode of take the car for all occasions. We use a Bosch dishwasher that uses less water than most DW (I think). We have the front loading washer & dryer; we are considering putting solar panels on our roof.
I applaud your efforts with the meeting/convention industry. I was at a conference at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Vegas in 2007 and remember being saddened by the thought of how much waste must go through Las Vegas every day with all of the plastic water bottles, laundry, wasted food, etc.
Please let me know if we can participate or get involved further. Especially at the kid level, that can have a generational impact. Our oldest son is almost a Life Scout and the second will start Cub Scouts next April, so any teaching I can do from Kindergarten to High School kids would be good.

My answer to all of you who are teaching and leading by example, KEEP IT UP! There is nothing better than "being the change", having fun with it and making it a natural part of everyday activities. I think the longest lasting impression we can make on our youth is by sharing with them simple healthy seasonal meals and the understanding of gardening.

Here are a couple of fantastic website's for kids of all ages.

http://littlelocavores.blogspot.com/
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/locavore.htm

Share with the kids how the President and the First Lady are making great efforts to lead by example with having the white house retrofitted to meet LEED Certification, and, the White House has an organic kitchen garden.

http://www.renewable-energy-news.info/president-barack-obama-leed-certification-white-house/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/20/spring-gardening/

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.

Make September, "Eat More Vegetarian Meals Month"

Calling All Green Citizens, 9/1/9

Here are Seven Great Books to Support This

7 Sustainable Reads *

1.
Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It
– by Jill Richardson

2. Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness
– by Lisa M. Hamilton

3. Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating - by Mark Bittman 

4. Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms – by Nicolette Hahn Niman

5. The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It – by Robyn O'Brien

6. The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food
– Wayne Roberts

7. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered – by Woody Tasch

*Source: http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/

 

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

 

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.

The Meetings and Events Standards Are Here!: http://wp.apexsolution.org/

Calling All Green Citizens 8/16/09

Opportunity Strikes! Until September 15th is your chance to review and comment on the APEX Green Meetings and Events Standards. Go to, http://wp.apexsolution.org/ to read, review and comment on the voluntary standards that have been written by your peers in the industry.
There is a 30 day period for public review and then the comments will be incorporated. Then the standards will be vetted with the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM) Sustainability committee. With ASTM approval the government can incorporate these into their procurement department for over twenty thousand governmental meeting planners. This will be an amazing green filter for purchasing and give metrics on meetings that we haven’t had up to now.
These voluntary standards have been written in a historical perspective. They will act as guidelines and be a tool of measurement. Planners and Suppliers will now have a level field and transparency. Evaluating a green meeting will become much easier with these metrics. We will be able to create a baseline, track historical performance and create a positive competitive environment.
Daniel Goleman, author of, “Ecological Intelligence” writes about transparency and how healthy it is for facilitating change without mandatory regulation and compliance. Goleman writes, “…the first generation of transparency came about as a result of forced disclosure such as the right-to-know laws…”, “The second generation of transparency was also mandated, by rules that forced companies to disclose hard-to-detect risks or benefits…”. “Third-generation transparency goes beyond voluntary and government-dictated disclosure to bottom-up transparency driven by vigilant, active consumers.”
The APEX and ASTM Green Meetings and Events Standards are just this; “bottom-up” driven specifications that our industry peers(over 200 planners and suppliers) have crafted so that we can all track, collaborate and improve our environmental, social and economic impact when we meet.
Goleman writes about how this radical transparency as self perpetuating. In the case of meetings; first there was a lack of inertia while there is a very little understanding of how to measure green, now currently we are becoming more mindful as we identify the need and means to measure our environmental performance. And, finally the radical transparency creates a synergy of “active attention” because of the “intrinsic pleasure of mindfulness”.
We are on the entering a stage of gaining pleasure from being aware of are impact on the environment and being able to make educated decisions to alleviate enormous waste. We are starting to revel in understanding a path to sustainability for ourselves and future generations.
I leave you with this powerful phrase from Denial Goleman. “intrinsic pleasure of mindfulness”

http://www.danielgoleman.info/blog/

Be Well, Behave and Be Green
Kim is on the APEX Green Meeting and Event Panel and is liaison to the Food and Beverage Committee. He also volunteers on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.

2000 Times More Energy = A Recipe for Disaster

 

Calling All Green Citizens 7/26/09

 

GO H20 NAKED, GO BOTTLELESS! : It takes 2000 times the energy to produce bottled water compared to tap water. The Pacific Institute, www.pacinst.org, has released a study showing how bottled water is 2000 times more energy-intensive than tap water and they warn that product that has traveled long distances, i.e., FIJI Water, Evian, etc. is even more of an energy vortex. Think about that the next time you create your banquet event order.

VOTE WITH YOUR DINING DOLLARS: Your dining decisions have a huge impact and when you are holding an event it's multiplied by the number of guests, 3-5 times a day. Quoting Daniel Goleman from his book, "Ecological Intelligence", "If we can find a better choice, that's a vote, and every vote counts. Saying it doesn't matter what I buy, is like saying it doesn't matter who I vote for." www.danielgoleman.info

SODAS: Here is another insight based on Goleman's book. Coca Cola did a water consumption study in partnership with The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to better understand how to reduce the amount of water used to produce a liter of Coke. They wanted to reduce the amount from 3 liters to 2.5 liters. In this study they looked at all of the components in the production process and the rude awakening was that when they looked at sugarcane they discovered that it requires some of the most intense water use of any crop. The shocker is that it takes 200 liters of water to grow the sugar cane that is required for one liter of coke!

MENU: Watch out. There are so many sources of negative environmental impact when it comes to your dining and menu choices. One would think that a "lacto-vegetarian" meal would be a much lighter carbon footprint, WRONG! If you substitute a hard cheese in place of beef the amount of dairy needed to make the cheese can involve as much energy and methane emissions as does the cradle to cradle impact of beef.

More to come on the culinary front. Watch for the APEX/ASTM Green Meetings and Events Standards to be posted for public review and comment in August. If you become a member of ASTM for only $75 dollars you can even vote on these. We need industry consensus on these for their approval. Logon, review, comment, vote, move it forward. www.apexsolution.org
www.astm.org

 

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.

Inspiration

 

Calling All Green Citizens 7/26/09

 

It's Sunday and I am traveling home from the Hyatt's Customer Roundtable and it's a perfect time to give thanks for the inspirational speakers that we experienced during the program.

Tamara Kennedy-Hill led a great session on, "What Shade of Green is Your Meeting?" The major take-away for me was, Measure, Report, Reduce;

MEASURE: You can only manage what you measure, reward success and encourage Improvement.

REPORT: Third party reporting is most effective along with annual tracking

REDUCE: Reductions at the source and if not, recycle or repurpose.

Vince Lombardi, Jr. was all about inspiring motivation. As much o this blog is about green and sustainable practices I will list some of Vince's quotes paired with the APEX Green Meetings and Events Practices (GMEP) about to be launched.

"Dissatisfaction is the essence of motivation" - With the lack of metrics for measuring green events the Convention Industry Council, Green Meetings Industry Council and the US EPA set out to gather volunteers to write these.

"Growth, change, improvement is a process" With the approval of the GMEP the industry will have a template for process of greening our meetings.

Vince quoted Ken Blanchard, author of the, "One Minute Manager" – "Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions" The GMEP will be this feedback loop for measuring the greening of meetings.

I haven't event touched upon the terrific session on Leadership that Terri Breining led, the awesome display of hypnotism during Anthony Galie's presentation on motivation and visioning success, and several more session that were concurrent with these.

Inspiration takes place when you unplug from your daily routine and experience a well planned educational program like this. I am refreshed, renewed and revitalized.

I hope that each of you has time this summer to have your very own time out and rediscover what lights your fire.

Be Well, Behave and Be Green

Kim is on the Board of Directors for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners association (FICP) where he is Vice President of Education. He volunteers on the, CIC's APEX/ASTM Green Meetings Events Panel. He is currently an Event Marketing Specialist with Guardian Investor Services LLC, NY, NY. Kim received the award of Greenest Meeting Planner of 2009 at the Green Travel Summit in March 2009.