By focusing on sustainability, you can add a feel-good element that’s actually a do-good element to your event.
The ability to green up your meeting and involve your attendees is easier than ever, and increasingly, corporate groups are looking for this to be part of their programmes. Plus, if you’re planning a Promote meeting, it’s a great tie-in for a brand as well.
What are some cool ways to green up your event? Here are four that we like and that are relatively easy to carry out.
Dispense with paper before, during and after your event.
For all your interactions with attendees, use email, social channels and apps. This might sound daunting, but it doesn’t need to be. There are many meeting apps available now, and your venue will also likely have one you can use as well. This doesn’t mean you don’t want your message to look good; it just means you will be shifting your design elements to digital.
During your event, tap an app to engage and keep in touch with your attendees. Also, make use of kiosks and displays to provide agendas, directions and even fun educational information. Again, you can spice up what you share electronically, just as meeting planners have done for years on paper.
The green payoff can add up fast. According to Reduce.org, “Reducing paper use reduces greenhouse gases: 400 reams of paper is like 1.25 acres of pine forest absorbing carbon for a year.”
Go local with your menu
Farm-to-table menus are not only tasty and trendy, they can be a more sustainable approach to dining. When you devise a meeting menu that focuses on local producers, you reduce the carbon emissions involved with getting the ingredients to the table at your event.
Your culinary team at the venue can work with you to come up with a menu that’s both delicious and “green”.
To really make your event lively, you could make this an interactive activity. Consider having the culinary team at a meal station to detail the unique local ingredients. You might even have a “make your own” station where your attendees whip up guacamole from locally grown avocados, or a farm-fresh salad bar for a lunch meal that showcases only local greens and veggies.
Brand up the water service
Dispensing with plastic water bottles for breaks is a major way to reduce your waste footprint.
One way to make this event-friendly is to give reusable mugs or water bottles as gifts and have your attendees use them throughout your event. Set up inviting stations throughout the meeting space.
For fun, you can also add fruit-infused water to liven up the taste. These stations also can provide a lovely décor element too.
If bottled water is a must, then make onsite recycling a key element. Explain how your group will recycle and perhaps partner with a local organisation as part of the effort.
Think scale
Another simple tactic is to serve F&B family-style for meals. That reduces containers and serving dishes—two ways to be more green.
The beauty of this idea is that it can create a compelling networking element for meals at your event by bringing people together in more intimate dining settings, inducing conversation. It’s also a great icebreaker.
Plus, you can create a menu of farm-to-table foods and batch-style beverages that look and taste amazing when served group-style.
This is an edited version of an article on MeetingsImagined
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