Best Green Practices: A Checklist For Event Planners

Conference Planning

Select venues that are centrally located with multiple hotels and restaurants within a reasonable walking distance (walking is healthy, too).
Encourage the use of public transportation through selection of well-situated venues.
Consider devising a Carbon Offset program to offset attendees’ travel.
Find local vendors for convention rental needs, and request that they also use local subcontractors and inventories.

Transportation and Logistics

If you must coordinate transportation for attendees, develop schedules with shuttle companies or contract with an event transportation specialist.
Give attendees directions to event via various routes using public transportation, pedestrian routes and bicycle paths.

Registration, Communication & Logistics

Codify your firm’s commitment to sustainability by posting your policies and procedures on the conference website. (Read CRE’s own “green statement”)
Use e-mail and web forms to register attendees, confirm attendance and communicate with vendors and support personnel.
Get reusable badge holders with lanyards to reduce ID to a single, small printed area, and ask attendees to return holders after the event. Provide multiple, convenient and accessible drop-off locations.
If you do not eliminate conference bags entirely, then ensure that they are made of post-consumer and/or sustainable materials.
Reduce or eliminate paper, ink and print processes for conference agendas and programs, offering them online, via conference WiFi, or on a disk or thumb drive.
If you must print materials, use double-sided design with post-consumer-content paper and vegetable or soy ink.

Presentations, Meetings & Meals

Print any required signs and banners on recycled paper and allow for reuse by leaving off dates. Consider using a small projector to project banner or signage.
Only use energy- and environmentally-efficient office equipment at the event, if any.
Develop and implement a recycling program inside the meeting venue starting the first day, and promote it unceasingly.
At meals, use no disposable items, not even paper napkins, and instruct servers to give water only on request, to speakers on the dais as well as attendees at the tables.
Encourage presenters, speakers and exhibitors to offer materials online, on a disk, on flash memory (custom thumb drives), or via conference WiFi.
Provide reusable mugs or water bottles for attendees’ use during the entire event, and set up “water stations” for refills.
Consider enlisting the help of a professional, reputable event production firm, such as CRE, to ensure the best possible results.