One of the most profound ways for our industry to green its operations is to think of everything we do as part of a supply chain, not just as an end product.
It’s a simple mental shift that carries big implications for meetings and events. It may run counter to the training and habits that many meeting professionals have accumulated over the years. But it points the way to truly sustainable meetings that will better withstand the economic and environmental pressures that are likely in store for the industry.
Part of the magic of a well-orchestrated meeting is the onsite team’s ability to focus a bunch of end products and services at a single point in time and space. Every imaginable logistical element—from food and beverage, to speaker gifts, to truckloads of expo collateral and construction material—must arrive at the meeting site, and arrive on time. I know many planners who take pride in the effort that goes on “behind the curtain” at an event. They figure they’ve succeeded when participants enjoy a smooth, seamless experience onsite, never glimpsing the flurry of activity that made it possible.
But there’s another curtain that meeting professionals rarely notice. (It’s okay. As we know, that’s what curtains are for.) This second curtain conceals the energy, water, and materials we consume, the carbon we emit, and the incredible volumes of waste we generate, whenever a meeting takes place. That’s why thinking about the meetings supply chain is the first step for anyone in our industry who wants to fully understand, and eventually control, their onsite footprint.
• When exhibitors faithfully print all their giveaways on recycled paper, but leave behind discarded construction materials and large stacks of unused collateral at the end of the show, they help make meetings one of the biggest producers of trash, second only to the construction industry. But that’s not all. It took energy, carbon, and other resources to produce that material and get it to the meeting site. All of that is now being wasted.
• If a speaker gift is made of recycled glass, but had to be shipped from China or Spain to a meeting in North America, its footprint includes the Bunker C oil that carried it across the ocean. The Bunker C will take care of itself once oil hits US$150 or US$200 per barrel, but that’s another story for another post.
• Hotels and convention centres procure a dizzying array of products and services, more than any onsite checklist will ever capture. The specifics get down to the newspaper at your door that you never requested and won’t likely have time to read (paper, water and energy in the printing process, possible heavy metals in the ink), and linen reuse programs that rarely work as advertised (water for laundry, energy to heat it, carbon to produce the energy). By hitting the high points and thinking beyond the finished product, facilities can get a better sense of their actual green performance, and help planners do the same. The bonus is that they can cut costs by greening their operations.
Thinking out the whole supply chain is like delivering a speech in paragraphs, rather than monosyllables. And it helps planners and suppliers answer one of the toughest questions about green meetings.
Our industry’s drive toward sustainability has led to a wave of greenwashing, and while some of it is deliberate, I believe most of it is inadvertent. It’s easy to launch a sustainability program with great intentions, announce it with suitable fanfare, then trip over the details. But when customers are left with no way to distinguish real, legitimate sustainability programs from the pale imitations, paralysis is the inevitable result.
So the details matter, and a supply chain mindset helps flush them out. Even with the best practices, some of the specifics are bound to fall short. That’s what continuous improvement is about, and it’s all the more reason to understand our industry’s full environmental footprint, to make the results of our sustainability efforts measure up to the hype.

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