Where 20 years ago sustainable meetings were a cutting-edge concept, the business events industry of today is not only adopting green practices in every aspect of their operations but shifting the conversation toward net-positive outcomes. Here are five highlights:
The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) and the Strategic Alliance of the National Convention Bureaux of Europe (SANCBE) announced during IMEX Frankfurt that they were launching a new global business event sustainability conference, Convene 4 Climate. The inaugural event will be held Oct. 2-3 in Barcelona, Spain.
The workshop-based program will explore ways business events can mitigate the climate impacts of their meetings while also ensuring long-term profitability by looking at the issues involved through three lenses—Reimagine, Inspire and Movement. The programming will be designed to encourage meaningful discussion, collaborative problem-solving and the development of actionable strategies among both key industry stakeholders and a cross-section of related professionals.
“Together with SANCBE, PCMA is co-creating a way forward for a regenerative future that empowers the global business events industry to continue to operate in a commonsense way while driving positive change for a new economy,” says Sherrif Karamat, CAE, PCMA and CEMA President and CEO. “Now is the time to embark on this transformative journey to reimagine the future, inspire sustainable progress and ignite a movement towards a more resilient tomorrow.”
Where the focus used to be on reducing the effects of meetings on the environment, it has shifted toward creating net-positive outcomes for both human and environmental wellbeing. One example of this is Joycoast—a sustainable corporate gifting provider that crafts eco-friendly wooden accessories such as sunglasses, watches and wallets—which plants 10 trees for every product sold.
“We have planted about 80,000 trees so far, which is pretty cool, but my goal is to get to a million trees in the next two years, as well as reduce the amount of harmful, single-use plastics in the environment,” says Joycoast Founder Reese O’Toole.
“Most of the wood we use to make our products comes from Africa—we source all the wood we use from Forest Stewardship Council-certified forests—so that’s where we replant trees as well. We work with a couple of partner companies that use the forest garden approach. They teach impoverished farmers in Africa how to grow a forest garden that will feed their families and provide surplus they can take to market to create an additional source of income that they then spend within their community. So it really uplifts the whole community.”
ConferenceDirect’s Annual Partner Meeting (APM) 2024 in Arlington, Texas, was its first carbon-neutral event. Carbon offsets were purchased to mitigate the carbon footprint of attendee travel to the event.
ConferenceDirect follows the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 and has committed to a 30 percent carbon reduction by 2030. Its team of sustainable meeting planners also have completed the Sustainable Events Professional Certificate by the Events Industry Council.
More and more industry suppliers are creating dedicated roles for sustainability leaders, such as ASM Global, with more than 50 green-certified venues. ASM recently appointed Lindsay Arell as its new chief sustainability officer, ramping up its efforts to make all 400 of its venues more sustainable.
In previous roles, Arell created the ASM Global ACTS sustainability plan and is former chair of the EIC Sustainability Committee and ASTM Venue Sustainability Standard.
As LEED evolves, the bar is pushed higher—and major U.S. convention centers are building and renovating facilities with significant green and sustainable features. Currently, many of the largest convention centers in the U.S. are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, with additional certifications pending. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED rating system identifies healthy and highly efficient green buildings and includes several categories of building types: new construction, interior fit outs, operations and maintenance and core and shell. Ratings are based on a point system with three levels: silver, gold and platinum.
Most recently, the Seattle Convention Center’s 1.5 million-sf Summit building earned LEED Platinum certification for new construction. Moscone Center in San Francisco holds LEED Platinum for the building operations and maintenance for its 504,000-sf campus. Also LEED Platinum-certified is the Oregon Convention Center, thanks to its comprehensive waste diversion program ensuring that the material brought into the building can be recycled, donated or taken back by the company that produced it.
LEED Gold-certified convention centers include the Los Angeles Convention Center; Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.; Huntington Place, Detroit; Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA; Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans; Orange County Convention Center, Orlando; Colorado Convention Center, Denver; Georgia World Conference Center, Atlanta; San Diego Convention Center; George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston; The Venetian Convention and Expo Center, Las Vegas; and The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh.