With interest in sustainability, fair trade, and green initiatives rising in all aspects of commerce, everyone involved in the meetings industry should be making sure they are doing their part to reduce waste. When you first think about waste, you probably turn to the obvious sources: food, water, energy, and paper. Concerns about wasting these resources began getting significant attention years ago, but it is hard to tell if that initial interest has been cemented into systemic action. As a planner, are you still asking what happens to the leftover food from your meetings and conferences? If you are in sales and convention services, are you discussing with planners the recycling and waste management efforts you can bring to bear on their meetings? Are you watching how much food is left over at breaks and meals to see if perhaps smaller portions are a better choice for your attendees? Have you thought about the amount of oil required to produce individual bottles of water? Do you really need to print new meeting room signs each year with the convention logo or can you print placards with your organization's logo that you can use for all your events year after year?

The Best of Intentions

I believe a fairly significant gap remains between what might be our true commitment to good stewardship of resources and how that commitment has been translated into consistent action. I often find myself in a hotel room with a note advocating the reuse of towels and sheets to save water - but with almost every light in the room left on by housekeeping. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels the need to crank up the air conditioning in even the mildest of temperatures in order to chill the room enough to not suffocate from the heat generated by all the wonderful new bedding in most properties. And in the more than 75 meetings and conferences I participated in during 2005, I did not see a single statement about recycling in a conference program book, hear an announcement from the podium, or see recycling bins prominently displayed for convention materials like program books, name badges, lanyards, tote bags, and briefcases.

Though we clearly have tremendous opportunities to do a better job managing our use and reuse of natural resources, the potential for better waste management doesn't end there. There are plenty of resources natural to the meetings arena that get wasted - including people's time. We owe it to participants (and to our work colleagues and meeting partners) to fully embrace available technology and thoughtfully implement systems and processes to automate as many actions and tasks as possible. Here is how we waste precious time:

• A member has to enter all her information to register instead of the form being prepopulated based on her member ID.
• Answers to commonly asked questions aren't easily accessed and staff have to respond to endless phone calls and e-mails.
• Records from previous events are inadequate, so an effort has to be made to recreate this information from scratch.
• Templates, scripts, and macros aren't used to automate repeated tasks.

We also demonstrate a lack of respect for our attendees' time when we force them to stand on long lines at meal functions. Or we create sessions which do not vary in length, so some speakers turn to filler to max out the clock.

Meetings often represent wasted opportunities. We'll explore some of them in the June installment of this column.