...and the dish ran away with the spork?

My little neighborhood paper, The Hollywood Star News" ran an article this month asking local residents to donate gently-used flatware to the schools. It seems, "Schools went to the seemily more efficient mode of handing out plastic "sporks" (wrapped in plastic) with a devastating effect on the environment--56,100 plastic spork packages are thrown away each school year at Alameda Elementary School alone!"

The school wants to change this system back to the olden days when reusable metal flatware and trays graced the cafeteria. The community is pitching in. I had no idea plastic sporks had become common place in elementary school--my kids are in their 20's--but in our throwaway society we train them young.

Perhaps this would be a great project your community too for local hotels, caterers, and meeting venues ridding themselves of flatware no longer living up to the "brand image."

Testing Our Intelligence

Ecologicial Intelligence. A fascinating study captured in Daniel Coleman's book of the same name. Goleman talks about how our "society has lost touch with what may be the singular sensibility crucial to our survival as a species." He goes on to say, "Ecological intellgence melds cognitive skills with empathy for all life. We display such empathy whenever we feel distress at the sign of "pain" of the planet or resolve to make things better." We need to tap into this intelligence in order to survive.

Goleman boils down our possible ecological goals to three simple rules:

1. Know your impacts
2. Favor improvements
3. Share what you learn

Simple and elegant rules to live by.

They Never Have To Take Their Shoes Off

Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.

~Elizabeth Berry

Tweet Deal

Want to see how your viral networks are functioning AND boost registration numbers for your next event at the same time? Here's an idea from one of our registration gurus, Cija...

"Use Twitter to send out a tweet from your organization offering a registration discount to the conference valid or the next 36 hours only. The offer is available from that exact moment but won't last. Tell them to register right now and send it on to their colleagues as time is ticking away. If you have the option of using coupon codes in your registration system, you might also give a prize for the person referring the most registrants during that time frame."

Give it a try. What do you have to lose?

Personal Best

It feels good to stand on the podium and enjoy a moment of recognition. Even if it is about waste. The GMIC' Sustainable Meetings Conference, Colorado Convention Center, MeetGreen, and conference participants deserve a round of applause for a 97% diversion rate during this month's conference. A personal best for all involved I believe.

The judges scores are in with 12% of the waste generated going to recycling and 85% to the compost bin. A mere 3% went to the landfill.

Congratulations!

Enough Already!

Alright, I know you are tired of hearing about water bottle savings. Bear with me...during GMIC we were able to track the cost of using sponsored water bottles and water stations instead of individual bottled water so I wanted to show you the actual results.

GMIC participants used eleven 5-gallon jugs, which is the equivalent of 7,040 ounces at a cost of $634.38.

For the same water consumption in 16 ounce bottles it would have been 440 bottles x $4.58 inclusive or $2,015.20. Resulting in a savings of $1380.82 for a conference of 225 people or just over $6 a person.

HOWEVER – this means that by filling up their own water bottles we provided, the average water consumption was the equivalent of only two bottled waters per person over three days. If individual bottles had been available, our experience has been that attendees would have taken more than one bottle each day. So if each attendee had taken just one bottle each day the total could have been as high as 675 bottles or $3,091.50.

A sponsorship opportunity and a cost savings. Case closed...I promise!

You Should Have Been There

For those of you who weren't able to attend the Sustainable Meetings Conference last week, here is a great recap by Glenn Hasek of Green Lodging News! http://www.greenlodgingnews.com/Content.aspx?id=4382