At the 2024 Newport International Boat Show, detailed signage was used to help patrons sort their waste into recycling and landfill bins. This was the start of a multiyear event sustainability plan. Courtesy of Eva Touhey

When meetings began to return to in-person formats following the peak of the pandemic, delegates and planners alike celebrated the opportunity to connect, learn and network face-to-face once again. However, while in-person meetings are great for business growth, they bring with them a significant environmental impact. From promotional mailers and other printed materials and signage to travel emissions, single-use plastics and substantial solid waste, there’s no dispute that in-person meetings leave a considerable carbon footprint in their wake. But with thoughtful planning and purposeful decision making, planners can ensure that their events are more sustainable without affecting the extraordinary impact, excitement and success of their meetings.

“Everyone — from global corporations to small and medium-size businesses — is looking for ways to make their events more sustainable. Many have their own carbon, water, waste or social impact targets that they’re trying to achieve,” says Kelly Knowlen, vice president of sales engagement and special events for Hilton. In January, the company released a special section of its 2025 Trends Report, “The Meetings Maximizer: The Next Generation of Meetings & Events.” Knowlen describes today’s planners and their attendees as “maximizers,” saying they seek to make the most out of in-person connections, their network and time together. She adds that, more than ever, planners and event goers are considering the environmental or social impact of their meeting, event and travel decisions — and the report, Knowlen says, shows that 73% of people agree it’s important to minimize their environmental impact while traveling.

Sustainable Destinations: Location, Location, Location

Sustainability is a growing priority for many meeting planners, and when it comes to adopting greener practices, where the meeting is held can make a big difference. There are two primary considerations when it comes to considering locations: the destination itself and how far away it is from the majority of attendees, which can greatly impact travel-related emissions.

Meeting planners considering large-scale venues can conduct a quick search to see which convention centers are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified. Governed by the US. Green Building Council, LEED is the most widely used green building rating system, ranking properties for sustainability achievement. San Francisco’s Moscone Center and the Seattle Convention Center are the highest-rated convention centers, but coast to coast more than a dozen are recognized.

Some centers are making innovative strides to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, Chicago’s McCormick Place — the largest convention center in North America — is home to the biggest farm-to-fork rooftop garden in the Midwest. In addition to introducing campus-wide composting, McCormick Place is conducting a pilot program of waste-sorting technology using AI-guided machines to assist guests in placing their refuse into the proper receptacle.

Smart Moves: Eco-Friendly Travel Choices

It’s been widely reported that aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions, and transportation is often the largest source of those carbon emissions for conferences. Meeting planners can help reduce an event’s impact by considering destinations with airports that are major hubs, offering delegates more opportunity for direct flights or fewer stopovers. Consider centrally located destinations to reduce the number of long-haul flights, and take into account how close the accommodations and meeting site are to the airport. Also, encourage guests to use shuttles provided by lodging properties — or, for larger groups, consider chartering a private motorcoach. For smaller groups, and meetings with multiple attendees from the same organizations, carpooling might be an option, while for some destinations, public transportation is especially convenient.

Sustainable Spaces

Christine Faria is the director of conferences and events for Raving, a full-service, Native-owned casino and hospitality consulting company. Her two key annual events include Raving NEXT: Indian Gaming Analytics and Marketing Conference, and the Casino Marketing & Technology Conference. Faria says one area in which she makes efforts to minimize her meetings’ environmental impact is food-and-beverage programs. “For example, we don’t offer bottled water at our conferences,” she says. Instead, attractive beverage stations offer fruit-infused water. “It’s a little bit nicer than just plain water to offer our attendees,” Faria adds. And when it comes to coffee, individual creamers have been replaced with carafes featuring a variety of dairy and plant-based options.

Both of Faria’s events are held at the Pechanga Resort Casino on the Pechanga Indian Reservation in Temecula, CA. Especially cognizant of the precious natural resources there, the casino has a robust food waste recycling program. Sutisa Spellman, Pechanga’s director of sales, catering and banquet, says they send around 10 tons of food scraps for recycling every week, transforming it into compost, biofuel and animal feed.

“We also turn all our used cooking oil, thousands of gallons … into biofuel,” Spellman says. To save even more energy, the casino hotel’s 1,100 guestrooms come standard with low-flow water fixtures and are outfitted with energy-saving LED light fixtures featuring automatic dimmers. As for reuse, 25,000 partially unused rolls of toilet paper (annually) and gently used linens and robes are donated to a regional rescue mission. In addition, the onsite golf course — popular with meeting planners as a team-building activity — employs a multitude of water-saving practices, including a weather detection system that automatically shuts off the sprinklers if there’s rain.

Spellman adds that linenless tables have been a game changer at meetings and events. “That helps us save water and reduce the amount of soap and cleaning agents used,” she explains. Faria agrees that the change has multiple benefits. “It’s good because linens can get dirty, and then they don’t look nice anymore,” she says. “Even highboys — they really need to be changed from day to day.” In addition to saving water, eliminating the need to launder linens saves dollars and labor as they typically need to be transported to and from event spaces.

“We do the six-foot linenless tables in the exhibit hall as well, and I do think some of the new tables just look a lot better,” Faria says. “When they don’t use tablecloths, it takes the weight off me to go and walk the floor and audit to make sure that the staff has done that, which, in turn, if they’re not using tablecloths, it also saves [the property] water and energy.”

Hilton’s Meet with Purpose program, launched 10 years ago, invites planners and attendees to get involved in sustainable practices both at the hotel and in the local community. In 2022, it added a checklist providing thoughtful tips to empower meeting planners and travel managers to make impactful purchasing decisions. “For example, using low-waste options, low-energy options, having a climate-conscious menu or incorporating volunteer events to give back to the local community,” Knowlen explains. The hotelier also created a “LightStay Meeting Impact Calculator” that analyzes a hotel’s specific utility and emissions data to provide an estimate of the carbon emissions, water and waste generation associated with a specific meeting or event. “This data is used to inform customers of the environmental impact of their event and how their efforts contribute to their own sustainability goals,” she says. “It will also inform Hilton’s Carbon Neutral Meeting program, allowing Hilton to offset the emissions that could not be mitigated by the recommendations provided by the Meet with Purpose checklist. ”​

From Paper to Pixels: The Digital Advantage

Holly Roderick, CMP, CEM, senior director of member experience for the 65,000-member National Fire Professionals Association (NFPA), says her organization has used a mobile app for nearly two decades, placing it at the forefront of technology adoption for its meetings and events. The experienced planner says that she saw a sizable shift in visitors’ reliance on the NFPA app, especially post-pandemic. “At our conference, we have close to 8,200 attendees, and we have folks from all different age demographics. Most of our attendees are age 50 and over, so what we’re trying to do is to be more sustainable, but also to be relevant to different age groups and audiences,” Roderick explains. While the conference isn’t quite paper-free, the association is purposeful when it comes to printed materials. “Especially with the pandemic, people have really caught up to technology,” she adds.

Meeting apps have come a long way from their humble beginnings. Far beyond the agenda, location details, exhibit hall hours and speaker bios, today’s technology enables users to customize their schedules and utilize networking tools, as well as get updates and submit questions in real time at sessions. Attendees can also participate in real-time polling, explore and connect with exhibitors and provide valuable feedback, all through an app. From a green perspective, they’ve greatly reduced paper usage, benefiting both the planet and the bottom line.

“People can craft their schedule, figure out what education sessions they want to attend, star which exhibitors they want to visit — and we actually administer all of our CEUs [Continuing Education Units] right through our mobile app as well,” Roderick says. “And so they literally, when they’re done, have an entire transcript of everything that they did while they were at the conference.”

Roderick points out that the app doesn’t become obsolete after the conference. It stores valuable information sheets, handouts, assets and other materials. “That’s really where those paper pieces that would have previously been put in a room — they’re now stored in the app. So, anybody can then go back and access them at any time and be able to pull out those resources to use them,” she says.

“We also have a special registration type that we offer that is basically all of our sessions … audio recorded and also screen-grab recorded,” Roderick says. “So, whatever the slides are … we have attendees that purchase that so they can actually go back and see every session that’s offered, and have those materials after the fact.” She adds that the app is accessible to attendees not just on their phones, but also via tablet, laptop and desktop. “So, it’s really good if they want to access it after the fact. They can watch sessions and get the resources all there, right from their computer,” Roderick says. And with functionality including gamification through an exhibitor scavenger hunt, NFPA also fosters connection and encourages face-to-face interaction. “We use it for audience engagement, and also for exhibitors to get more leads, so we really try to use it for a bunch of different purposes that really replace where you would have had paper in the past,” she adds.

Faria has also pivoted to an app for her conferences. It’s taken the place of larger print pieces as well, including lengthy guidebooks and manuals. “We have really reduced the amount of paper that we use with it,” she says. “We used to do full-on training manuals, which people to this day say they still have on their shelf — that’s a compliment. I’m a little bit sad that we don’t have that anymore; however, it really saves on the shipping costs of all these manuals and handouts, so we really limit that now with the use of the app.”

Eco-experts to the Rescue

Grassroots green meeting efforts can be a challenge, but a sustainability expert can help lighten the load. “Event organizers have so much on their plates leading up to and during the execution of an event, so sustainability consulting businesses can provide capacity to the event and facilities team,” says Eva Touhey, founder of WasteNaut Consulting. She concedes that introducing environmental initiatives to a meeting can be overwhelming, so companies like hers can best assess an organization’s goals and aspirations to streamline overall event operations.

“We can help them come up with a plan for implementation — usually a multi-year plan, depending on the frequency of the event — and then actually assist with program implementation and evaluation, ensuring accountability,” Touhey explains. “I like to think of WasteNaut Consulting as a collaborative entity. We will idea-share with your team, create a sustainability plan that matches their needs and then help them measure their environmental impact so the organization can communicate their initiative back with their constituents, whether that’s volunteers, members, donors or potential sponsors.”

Greener gatherings are possible when making sustainability a priority throughout the planning process. Reducing waste while increasing awareness is a win-win, and organizations can lead the way by minimizing their environmental footprint as they look ahead toward a more sustainable future.   I&FMM