The time to build corporate social responsibility practices into your meeting is right at the start.
To guide the way, the National Business Travel Association's Corporate Social Responsibility Committee developed and last year enhanced a 62-page toolkit that outlines different areas of responsible travel procurement. "Buyers should not underestimate their influence on vendors," the toolkit says. "No matter the size, all companies have the ability to influence vendors to innovate products and services with sustainability characteristics."
CSR committee member Jeff Cherry, Marriott International global account executive, offered the following steps that travel and meeting managers can take during the initial stages of the meeting process to ensure sustainability:
- Share your company's CSR objectives or policy with vendors as part of the request for proposals process; include questions that allow you to measure eco-impact.
- Request that vendors include their CSR objectives/policies in their RFP responses.
- Require that all invoices be delivered electronically, and ask vendors to provide an estimated carbon footprint on their commodity/service.
- When reviewing and measuring responses, give the same consideration to eco responses as to financial.
- Include a service-level agreement on green components in contracts. Final payment can include penalty deductions as well as incentive additions.
- Require post-event reporting on the environmental impact of the meeting from all vendors.
Get Attendees Involved
It's smart to include attendees in the green goals of the meeting right from the start, too. Use the registration process as a tool to educate attendees of reduction-target goals for the event and get them involved in any community outreach programs planned. According to the CSR Toolkit, the goals for the selected ideas and initiatives should be specific, measurable, realistic and time based. Some examples include:
- "We will reduce carbon emissions caused by business travel by 15 percent during the next 24 months."
- "We will reduce the share of internal meetings from 72 percent to 50 percent of all trips taken within 12 months."
- "Twenty percent of our contracted travel vendors will be audited during the next three years to comply with our social, ethical and environmental program criteria."
Three Ways To Use Data From Your Initiatives | 1Determine your actual footprint based on final reporting data from vendors and facilities based on actual attendance. | | | 2Determine the impact of your meeting's community event, if you do one, and detail the green success in a press release. | | | 3Develop a financial analysis of savings versus expense impact of your green initiatives. | |
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Some companies offer carbon offsetting, which is the purchase of credits toward investment in environmental or energy projects that avoid or reduce carbon emissions somewhere else (often in developing countries). More than 3,000 companies track and report greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, and that number is expected to triple in the next two years, according to NBTA. At Credit Suisse, for example, business air travel causes one-fifth of the bank's CO2 emissions and has become a target of its sustainability efforts. As a result of its offsetting efforts, air tickets for flights originating in Switzerland and booked through the bank's travel services are reported as carbon-neutral tickets. The company also recommends train travel as an alternative to short-haul flights.
If you choose not to offset, you can at least make attendees aware of ways they can decrease their footprints while attending the event and provide them with information on the impact of their single trip/meeting on the environment.
Planning Tips
At the planning stage of the meeting, Cherry said, there are various ways companies can add CSR components. Among them:
- Educate the planning team on creating green components that coincide with the objectives of the event.
- Research best practices using resources available through various organizations, like the Green Meeting Industry Council, Meeting Professionals International or the Professional Convention Management Association, as well as industry trade magazines and Web sites. NBTA's CSR Toolkit, which is available online, profiles the efforts of several companies, including A.T. Kearney, Barclay's Bank and HSBC, around greening meetings and travel.
- Hold planning sessions that focus on green meetings and community involvement.
- Create a CSR policy where minimum components must be applied at all events.
- Budget for green components.
- Calculate the carbon footprint of the entire event, as well as at the attendee level. There are various technologies you can use, such as a carbon calculator or online booking tools, to assist with airline carbon footprint calculation.
- Include print-on-demand and/or paperless delivery of handouts and research.
- Incorporate year-over-year reporting into your meetings management tool.
Where appropriate, consider virtual meeting technology alternatives. For example, A.T. Kearney has established a stringent baseline of achieving a 20 percent reduction in travel during a three- year period using virtual meetings.