Sustainable meeting
This webiste will soon be the portal of GMIC The Netherlands Chapter. For more information, we you can send an e-mail to gmic@sustainablemeeting.org.
The official launch of the chapter will be on 22 September 2010, during MICE Business&Travel Fair www.miceandbusinesstravelfair.nl. Around the launch this website will provide more information on GMIC and its activities in The Netherlands!
The rest of this website was an earlier initiative by Parthen the meeting services company. Parthen will sponsor GMIC by transforming the website to GMIC wishes and hand it over to GMIC.
The world is getting greener. Not the natural world, yet, sadly enough, but the corporate world is getting greener by the minute. Corporate responsibility is no longer just about employees and human environments, it's also about taking care of nature. This website serves as a platform to discuss solutions for organizing greener meetings and to set up partnerships that take corporate responsibility very serious.
Every meeting takes its toll
How far are you willing to go to make your daily operations as eco-friendly as possible? Which steps are you willing to take? Events, meetings and congresses are not known for their sustainability. Visitors and speakers regularly travel across the world to attend meetings. A lot of items are used that require transport and are thrown away afterwards, like (goodie) bags, lanyards and badges. There's also the energy that's required to power the meeting. All in all, every meeting takes its toll on the environment.
Reduction and compensation
There are a lot of ways to take care of the CO2-emission of your meeting. You can either reduce or compensate the emissions. Reducing means you analyze what causes the CO2-emissions and cut back in every possible way, without loosing vital parts of your event. Compensating means you give back what you take. For instance, you can invest in forest projects or windmill parks that will even out the CO2-emissions of your meeting. That way, sustainable meetings are very achievable.
Durability doesn't equal expensive
It sounds like a costly way of doing business. But it doesn't have to. Making your meeting sustainable doesn't require huge investments. Operating eco-friendly is cheaper than a lot of entrepreneurs think. Neither does it require a lot of extra effort. It also brings us back to earlier questions: how far are you willing to go to make your daily operations as eco-friendly as possible? Which steps are you willing to take?
Which way to go?
Through this website we want to inform you which steps you can take and how far you can go to organize sustainable meetings. There are green products, which offer very concrete and visible solution for 'going green'. There's also the issue of waste prevention which every company should take a good look at. Finally, there are companies like the Climate Neutral Group which can take care of the carbon footprint your meeting is leaving. Reducing and compensating CO2-emissions until your meeting is 100% climate neutral, that's a vision we would like to discuss with you.
Discussing the issues
You probably have your own ideas about sustainable meetings, green products and climate neutral operations in a commercial environment. We want to encourage you to post your ideas, your experiences and your opinions on our weblog. There are no final answers on this subject, so we would love to discuss the issues with as many people as possible.
Sustainablemeeting.org is an initiative of Parthen the meeting service company