Convention Industry Council (CIC) tackles Green Meeting & Event Standards

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Greg Ruby

This post is by Greg Ruby, Certifed Meeting Professional (CMP) and Certified Exhibition Manager (CEM) at the Baltimore Convention Center. He is fanatic about trade shows, exhibitions, conventions & venues. He is all about creating memorable events for organizers and attendees. All opinions expressed are his own.. Meet the rest of the team!

Anyone who has worked in the meetings and events field for any length of time will admit there is a great deal of waste and trash produced by events, in particular trade shows. There was a Price Waterhouse report issued several years back citing trade shows as the second most wasteful industry. In the summer of 2008, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) through its Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) formed a Green Meetings & Events Practices Panel to write standards to make our industry more “green” and environmentally responsible.

green_events
Photo by janusz l via Flickr

The Results

During the past year, there have been many conference calls, meetings, and emails to produce drafts of standards in nine (9) different areas of event management. The 9 drafts that have been produced are: Destinations, Meeting Venue, Transportation, Accommodations, AV, Communication, Food and Beverage, Exhibits and Onsite Office. (Disclosure: I was a member of the subcommittee that developed the Meeting Venues standards.) Copies of all these drafts can be found at http://wp.apexsolution.org for your review. There is a lot of detail in these drafts so think twice before deciding to print out all of them!

What can I do?

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Categories: Greg Ruby, environment