Calling All Green Citizens 5/25/09
Carbon Consciousness, I’m OK, You’re OK
The current trend we are experiencing of guilty pleasure associated with travel makes me think of an experience from high school. Let’s go way back in the time machine. In the 70’s the “pop psychology” book, “I’m Ok, You’re OK”, was all the rage. This read was the extent of my one semester of psych in high school. This book for me boiled down to Parent, Adult, and Child, and, our interpersonal relationship with ourselves and those we encounter.
However simple, it’s seems that our current state of guilt by association with travel requires us to consider buying carbon offsets for our indulgences. “Parents” are popping up everywhere enabled by Internet updates, transparency and the twitterization of everyone’s lives. In the United Kingdom where Eco-Activists call out what they perceive as green offenses people have been held publicly accountable for years. Public flogging for Eco-Insensitivity is coming west, it’s quickly becoming an, “I’m not OK, because You’re not OK culture.
If this is the dawn of the Age of Responsibility, are we in the initial phase when our “Parent” is yelling at us to straighten up and be accountable? Have we suddenly been made to take a “time out” as a “Child”, until we regain balance with our own “Parent” and “Adult” and come to terms with our impact on the environment?
The psychology aside; I do believe that our irrational exuberance was unsustainable and whether we are experiencing a “time out” or just a slow down this is an opportunity to reflect on how we travel. Whether it’s our daily commute, or, our corporate events, how we use natural resources is now everyone’s concern. History and Herstory shouldn't be written that we were the last couple of generations that squandered energy resources and didn’t plan for the future.
Be Well, Behave and Be Green
Monday, May 25, 2009
Calling All Green Citizens 5/25/09
Corporate and Citizen Social Responsibility - CCSR
Did anyone else notice in the press that at the White House Correspondents dinner recently that they announced they had skipped dessert and that expense was donated to a hunger charity? How great is that! Community giveback from the big white house in D.C..
This type of charity and support of the local community is what Corporate Social Responsibility is all about. And, this is why I suggest that we add a second C to CSR to include ourselves, the Citizens.
Social responsibility can, and should be an everyday awareness and it doesn’t have to be only Big Business that is leading the way. We have entered the age of responsibility and to really embrace this paradigm shift, “we the people” need to embrace our opportunities for change with as much fervor as we expect our Corporate Leaders and National regulators to. As fast as we decide that this new environment is full of opportunity we see all of the possibilities before us.
Case in point. I currently chair the education for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners Association (FICP) and a year ago when I was moderating a breakout session on CSR I was inspired by our panelists and stated that at the 2009 FICP Education Forum in Colorado Springs, CO, we would hold a community giveback event. Over the last 8 months we organized a charity committee and set out to choose a local charity and design this event.
We first of all looked at what was routine with this annual program and realized that our request for a sponsor to provide conference tote bags was unnecessary, we all had been given a lifetime of totes already. We had chosen the Boys and Girls Club of the Pikes County Region as our charity recipient and we realized why not ask the tote sponsor to purchase backpacks instead. The attendees can use them for the conference and then turn them in onsite where they will be donated as gently used for the children of the Club.
Once we embraced this idea we had the inspiration to include something in the backpacks for the kids. Our travel industry suppliers on the committee suggested that we put together a Colorado vacation that we could auction off at the conference and give the proceeds to the Boys and Girls Club. The Club was thrilled. With the auction proceeds they could buy snacks for the children’s backpacks, and, they would send them home with these on a Friday. The Club doesn’t have a weekend program and many of these children don’t have sufficient nutrition over the weekends.
We didn’t’ stop there. Last January when we made a trip to our host hotel we discovered that there is a Broadway size stage in our ballroom and were stymied with how to address this space. This is our annual education forum and we don’t budget for décor and entertainment. Once again, we thought of the Club. We are using a stunning photo of the, Garden of the Gods, in the foothills of the Rockies at Colorado Springs for the cover of our conference program. So, we asked the Club if they would like to host a painting contest with their children and they said that they did so every spring. Now, we are providing them with stenciled outlines of the cover photo for their contest and they are hosting a contest to pick the top 50 paintings. The winning paintings will be hung on the stage as our décor for the general sessions during the contest and the finalists get to join us one afternoon of the conference for a miniature golf tournament. That evening the Club’s Student of the Year will give their winning presentation and we will hold the live auction.
Our attendees get to know some of the club’s children first hand, and, the children will have a glimpse into our world. Corporate and Citizen good work. Corporate and Citizen Social Responsibility - CCSR
Watch for my next blog posting on, Carbon Consciousness and the Age of Responsibility.
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 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.
Corporate and Citizen Social Responsibility - CCSR
Did anyone else notice in the press that at the White House Correspondents dinner recently that they announced they had skipped dessert and that expense was donated to a hunger charity? How great is that! Community giveback from the big white house in D.C..
This type of charity and support of the local community is what Corporate Social Responsibility is all about. And, this is why I suggest that we add a second C to CSR to include ourselves, the Citizens.
Social responsibility can, and should be an everyday awareness and it doesn’t have to be only Big Business that is leading the way. We have entered the age of responsibility and to really embrace this paradigm shift, “we the people” need to embrace our opportunities for change with as much fervor as we expect our Corporate Leaders and National regulators to. As fast as we decide that this new environment is full of opportunity we see all of the possibilities before us.
Case in point. I currently chair the education for the Financial and Insurance Conference Planners Association (FICP) and a year ago when I was moderating a breakout session on CSR I was inspired by our panelists and stated that at the 2009 FICP Education Forum in Colorado Springs, CO, we would hold a community giveback event. Over the last 8 months we organized a charity committee and set out to choose a local charity and design this event.
We first of all looked at what was routine with this annual program and realized that our request for a sponsor to provide conference tote bags was unnecessary, we all had been given a lifetime of totes already. We had chosen the Boys and Girls Club of the Pikes County Region as our charity recipient and we realized why not ask the tote sponsor to purchase backpacks instead. The attendees can use them for the conference and then turn them in onsite where they will be donated as gently used for the children of the Club.
Once we embraced this idea we had the inspiration to include something in the backpacks for the kids. Our travel industry suppliers on the committee suggested that we put together a Colorado vacation that we could auction off at the conference and give the proceeds to the Boys and Girls Club. The Club was thrilled. With the auction proceeds they could buy snacks for the children’s backpacks, and, they would send them home with these on a Friday. The Club doesn’t have a weekend program and many of these children don’t have sufficient nutrition over the weekends.
We didn’t’ stop there. Last January when we made a trip to our host hotel we discovered that there is a Broadway size stage in our ballroom and were stymied with how to address this space. This is our annual education forum and we don’t budget for décor and entertainment. Once again, we thought of the Club. We are using a stunning photo of the, Garden of the Gods, in the foothills of the Rockies at Colorado Springs for the cover of our conference program. So, we asked the Club if they would like to host a painting contest with their children and they said that they did so every spring. Now, we are providing them with stenciled outlines of the cover photo for their contest and they are hosting a contest to pick the top 50 paintings. The winning paintings will be hung on the stage as our décor for the general sessions during the contest and the finalists get to join us one afternoon of the conference for a miniature golf tournament. That evening the Club’s Student of the Year will give their winning presentation and we will hold the live auction.
Our attendees get to know some of the club’s children first hand, and, the children will have a glimpse into our world. Corporate and Citizen good work. Corporate and Citizen Social Responsibility - CCSR
Watch for my next blog posting on, Carbon Consciousness and the Age of Responsibility.
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 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.
Calling All Green Citizens 4.13.09
Green = Corporate Social Responsibility = Sustainability
What is Green? dictionary.com….verb (informal) to restore the vitality of: younger executives are greening corporate managements.
Green to me is, Citizen & Corporate Social Responsibility, which leads to sustainable life styles, business models and Our peaceful co-existence on Earth.
Green Meetings, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-Anxiety in the words of Al Gore, “We didn’t ask for it, but here it is.”
Al Gore, author of Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
http://www.ontheissues.org/Earth_in_the_Balance.htm
How green are our travel departments? This is hard to say as the metrics are debatable. We can individually initiate analysis, however, what if our companies’ purchasing software provided us with this data? Data is key. Time and again we find that if we enable individuals and corporations to monitor themselves we see action based on this feedback. What if our travel department’s software analyzed our carbon footprint? What if when we initiated a business trip there was a stage in booking our travel in which we saw the carbon impact of the various options; car/rail/air? Imagine for a moment if our job performance was partially rated by how well we managed our carbon footprint. At the beginning of the year our goal was set for us to increase productivity and decrease environmental impact, AND, we had software support for encouraging us to make educated, impactful decisions!
Remember it’s the big things that we have to focus on to “Get Green Done”, as Auden Schendler says in his book of the same name. It’s rolling up our sleeves and tackling the macro issues like Auden describes in his current blog, “Losing Money through the Walls”.
Be Well, Behave and Be Green
Green = Corporate Social Responsibility = Sustainability
What is Green? dictionary.com….verb (informal) to restore the vitality of: younger executives are greening corporate managements.
Green to me is, Citizen & Corporate Social Responsibility, which leads to sustainable life styles, business models and Our peaceful co-existence on Earth.
Green Meetings, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-Anxiety in the words of Al Gore, “We didn’t ask for it, but here it is.”
Al Gore, author of Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
http://www.ontheissues.org/Earth_in_the_Balance.htm
How green are our travel departments? This is hard to say as the metrics are debatable. We can individually initiate analysis, however, what if our companies’ purchasing software provided us with this data? Data is key. Time and again we find that if we enable individuals and corporations to monitor themselves we see action based on this feedback. What if our travel department’s software analyzed our carbon footprint? What if when we initiated a business trip there was a stage in booking our travel in which we saw the carbon impact of the various options; car/rail/air? Imagine for a moment if our job performance was partially rated by how well we managed our carbon footprint. At the beginning of the year our goal was set for us to increase productivity and decrease environmental impact, AND, we had software support for encouraging us to make educated, impactful decisions!
Remember it’s the big things that we have to focus on to “Get Green Done”, as Auden Schendler says in his book of the same name. It’s rolling up our sleeves and tackling the macro issues like Auden describes in his current blog, “Losing Money through the Walls”.
Be Well, Behave and Be Green
Blog Post, April 09, Earth Awareness Month
My name is Kim Boriin, alias; The Green Boriin. I am a greenvangelist. Together with this blog I hope that we can explore green meetings, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. If you had Googled, “green meetings” a year ago you’d have gotten 2.8 million results. April 2009 a year later you receive 59.5 MILLION results. There is no doubt that there is a sea change happening regarding how we travel and hold meetings.
In this blog I want to share with you some of the amazing stories that are happening everyday in our industry, and, hear from you all what you are experiencing.
Presently, I volunteer with the Convention Industry Council’s Green Meetings and Events Panel. The CIC is partnering with the US EPA on the Green Meetings and Events Panel to develop Green Meeting Standards.
This entire effort is founded on industry consensus and everyone is invited to take part in reviewing, commenting and voting on these through the international organization, American Society for Testing Materials(ASTM). ASTM is one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world and is a trusted source for technical standards for materials, products, systems, and services. ASTM International, was formed over a century ago, when a forward-thinking group of engineers and scientists got together to address frequent rail breaks in the burgeoning railroad industry. Standards developed at ASTM are by consensus of the industry’s technical experts participation in ASTM International is open to all with a material interest, anywhere in the world.
With the adoption of these Standards, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.
Going green and giving back continue to be an important part of almost every company's corporate mission statement. We can all seize the opportunity to design meetings with green, sustainable business practices and relationship-building CSR events. There are countless ways of framing these efforts so they benefit both the bottom line the community, and future business. Green, to me, means sustainable, healthy, forward thinking, and state of the art. CSR means embracing our company's mission to give back, and sharing these values through our meetings and events.
I truly believe that we stand at the dawn of the age of responsibility. We are the early adaptors, the beta testers, the leaders of Green Meetings. This place is not a resting place, this is a launching pad. Now is not the time to hold back, it is the time to encourage one another, and, BE THE CHANGE.
Be Well, Behave and Be Green
My name is Kim Boriin, alias; The Green Boriin. I am a greenvangelist. Together with this blog I hope that we can explore green meetings, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. If you had Googled, “green meetings” a year ago you’d have gotten 2.8 million results. April 2009 a year later you receive 59.5 MILLION results. There is no doubt that there is a sea change happening regarding how we travel and hold meetings.
In this blog I want to share with you some of the amazing stories that are happening everyday in our industry, and, hear from you all what you are experiencing.
Presently, I volunteer with the Convention Industry Council’s Green Meetings and Events Panel. The CIC is partnering with the US EPA on the Green Meetings and Events Panel to develop Green Meeting Standards.
This entire effort is founded on industry consensus and everyone is invited to take part in reviewing, commenting and voting on these through the international organization, American Society for Testing Materials(ASTM). ASTM is one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world and is a trusted source for technical standards for materials, products, systems, and services. ASTM International, was formed over a century ago, when a forward-thinking group of engineers and scientists got together to address frequent rail breaks in the burgeoning railroad industry. Standards developed at ASTM are by consensus of the industry’s technical experts participation in ASTM International is open to all with a material interest, anywhere in the world.
With the adoption of these Standards, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.
Going green and giving back continue to be an important part of almost every company's corporate mission statement. We can all seize the opportunity to design meetings with green, sustainable business practices and relationship-building CSR events. There are countless ways of framing these efforts so they benefit both the bottom line the community, and future business. Green, to me, means sustainable, healthy, forward thinking, and state of the art. CSR means embracing our company's mission to give back, and sharing these values through our meetings and events.
I truly believe that we stand at the dawn of the age of responsibility. We are the early adaptors, the beta testers, the leaders of Green Meetings. This place is not a resting place, this is a launching pad. Now is not the time to hold back, it is the time to encourage one another, and, BE THE CHANGE.
Be Well, Behave and Be Green
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