Consider Location!

Choose a location where people can walk, ride bike, or take public transit instead of driving!

Encourage attendees to carpool!

Have Spaceshare set up a system for your event.

Provide Incentives.

Choose not to provide parking for attendees or charge for parking.

Make it Easy for Them!

Have Spaceshare set up carpooling for your event!
Offer rental bicycles or provide contact for rental services, and provide facilities for cyclists such as lockers and showers.

Choose a Central Location.

Try to choose a location for your event that is close to public transportation and a major airport (so those who fly don't have to drive as well.)

Offer Green Discounts!

Consider partnering with mass transit companies and provide discount prices.

Provide Incentives for Attendees to Commute Via Green Transit.

Consider options such as:
Choose not to provide parking for attendees or charge for parking.
Provide gift certificates to local restaurants for those who travel green.

Offer local, organic and vegetarian food!

After travel, the biggest impact of a typical event is food.

• Besides your own catering, inform attendees about local green restaurants.

Catering

• Be sure to ask every caterer you consider about their recycling, composting, waste minimization and local/organic sourcing. Educate them about your preferences, even if your location and budget don't allow perfection this year.
• To find green caterers, check out our services page.

Reduce food waste.

• Avoid single serve containers and unnecessary items, such as straws and stirrers for coffee.
• Make arrangements to donate leftover food to a food bank.
  America's Second Harvest lists foodbank locations.
• Put out compost bins for leftover food scraps.

Determine your motivations.

Have a team meeting where you discuss greening, starting with your motivations both as individuals and as an organization. more »Before developing a green plan, it helps to know why you are making that decision, and what resources you are willing to commit. Are you a personally committed individual in a larger organization that doesn't care, a company that sees this as the latest fad and wants to offer carbon offsets to give yourself a green coat, an organization aiming to meet the highest standards?

80/20 Results/Effort

For light-green events, focus on your biggest impacts first: transportation, waste/recycling, and food. Choose a site to minimize flights. Ask all potential venues and providers for their green plan. Encourage attendees to take the train or carpool and look for green hotels.

Create a green mission statement.

How can you bring everyone on board? more »Social responsibility will have the strongest effect on your bottom line when everyone -- clients, partners, and especially employees -- respects your company for your efforts. Top down, bottom up, or use greening as a way to strengthen and bond your team.

Team, Resources, and Budget.

Will you have a greening team, or will everyone participate together? When do you check in? How is greening factored into your workflow? Can you insist on green, budget for it, hire a green planner to do it for you? Outperform competitors »Socially Responsible companies keep outperforming their supposedly budget-minded competitors. Go ahead and inspire your clients, your suppliers, your attendees and your colleagues and employees.

Choose a Guide.

This online guide is intended as a starting point to help you focus. Our main goal is the next step: to help you find a guide that matches your motivations and resources.

Need Planning Help?

Check out Planners and Services for professional help in your area.

Editorial: Community Building

Back before "green" was awash in commercialism and offsetting, community and attention to detail were considered intrinsic. This wasn't just for hippies: even as the chemical industry took major steps towards greening ten and twenty years ago, the heart of the changes wasn't cash payments for making messes, it was paying better attention to their production process. Greening made the chemical industry much more efficient at their core mission. We believe that the events industry will undergo the same revolution when it takes these green values to heart. Focus on why your attendees are coming to your event instead of staying home and watching a low-impact video? How can you best provide those values with the least resources, from the time they walk out the door of their home until they return? Sharing leads to community, simplicity keeps attendees focused, localizing leads to more fruitful connections.

Put it in Writing!

Create a green mission statement that lets those involved know that it will be a green event so they can plan accordingly.
Appoint a green committee to oversee and report on sustainable practices.

Consider Attendee Travel.

Choose a location that's central and accessible by public transport.
Encourage participation through teleconferencing rather than traveling to the
conference.

Have a Plan for Waste Management.

Use electronic correspondence whenever possible and ask participants to bring their own paper, pens, and reusable coffee mugs.
Purchase items in bulk to minimize packaging waste.
Make recycling and compost bins available with clear instructions for proper disposal.

Need Planning Help?

Check out Planners and Services for professional help in your area.

Educate

• Let attendees know what you are doing, let them know who they can contact in your organization to talk about green ideas, and most importantly let them know what they can do. If you give attendees a take-home idea or a chance to actively participate, they'll remember you.
• In your conference materials, have a short set of activities that attendees need to do now. »After describing everything you're doing behind-the-scenes to be green including the flow restricter on the kitchen sink, remind attendees about the steps they need to take right then: transportation plans (train, carpool, bus from the airport), the closest green hotel to reserve a room, and anything else they need to do right then.
  
• Green Guides is planning to help events educate their attendees. You can be one of the first to link to the most relevant page on our site, with YOUR LOGO on top, for free. Contact us.

Engage

Nothing is as powerful as getting attendees to participate. Greening and other "socially responsible" activities shouldn't be seen primarily as a "cost" to an event, but as means to your ends, and especially as an ice-breaker so that people meet at your meetings:

• Encourage attendees to share their travels, using it as a networking opportunity. During the conference, a solo drive from the conference location to a tour location is a waste of time; a bus or shared ride is one of the best networking opportunities -- part of the conference.
• Ask for volunteers who'll introduce their dinner table to your conference's greening goals. New leaders »Greening & other socially responsible discussions will draw out leadership skills from new contributors.
  

Staying Home?

In theory, webcasts would let us share all the information we share at a conference without ever getting in a car or plane. In reality, people want to meet -- but often they most look for connections that last after a meeting. Can you find a way to hold local meetings? Keep people in their home city or region, and they can socialize with colleagues close enough to maintain connections, without burning jet fuel.

Speak Global, Meet Local

Will your organization be less cohesive by having less attendees at the annual gathering? Take a look at Beaming Bioneers, a California conference that strengthen's its own grassroots participation by not having everyone travel to the main meeting.