Going Green

Call it green, call it sustainability, but being environmentally savvy is not a trend. It's an important business practice that's here to stay.

According to Meeting Strategies Worldwide (www.meetingstrategiesworldwide.com), green meetings are defined as a "meeting that incorporates environmental considerations throughout all stages of the meeting in order to minimize the negative impact on the environment."

Going green is good for the environment and it’s good for business. Producing a green meeting can actually save customers’ bottom lines.

That’s why New Orleans is one of many destinations working to become more environmentally friendly for meetings and conventions.

Each organization is unique in terms of how it defines corporate social responsibility. For years, corporate America has selected New Orleans as a meetings destination and taken advantage of the wealth of “voluntourism” community service opportunities available to expand team building efforts and strengthen corporate social responsibility programs. Now, New Orleans’ hospitality community is investing in green practices to help achieve client business objectives and green requirements.

A task force of our hospitality community was created with representatives from meeting and entertainment venues, restaurants, destination management companies, hotels, visitor attractions, transportation and trash disposal companies. This group was formed to:

- Identify new ways to create and deliver green meetings.
- Engage the community in our findings to collectively become more socially responsible.
- Encourage local businesses to integrate green initiatives into their daily operations.
- Use a measurement tool to determine our continued successes.

The New Orleans Morial Convention Center is one of the largest convention centers in the nation with 1.1 million square feet of contiguous exhibit space. Imagine the environmentally-friendly practices that can be implemented in a building that is over one mile long and host to some of the nation’s largest conventions and exhibits.

So far, the New Orleans Morial Convention Center and its partner ARAMARK have many green programs underway:

Water Conservation
- Low flow faucets in restrooms
- Automatic faucets and toilets in restrooms
- Irrigation systems equipped with rain sensors to prevent excessive use of water resources

Energy Conservation
- Computerized Energy Management System in public areas and meeting space
- Energy efficient lighting
- Variable volume HVAC and pumping systems
- Daylight sensors for exterior lighting
- Manual control of escalators and other equipment when not needed
- Manual reset on heating hot water
- ARAMARK selects Engergy STAR equipment when purchasing new or replacement equipment

Waste Reduction
- A system in place for recycling cardboard
- The largest contributor in New Orleans to area food banks
- Bulk purchasing reducing packaging for materials brought into the building
- Reusable liners for meeting room setups
- Five-gallon water coolers instead of bottled water
- Cloth napkins and table cloths instead of paper
- Recyclable toner cartridges and other office supplies when possible

Clean Air Practices
- Environmentally friendly cleaners when possible
- Annual maintenance on all air handler units and coils
- Preventative maintenance regularly performed on boilers, diesel fire pumps and diesel generators

Even New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration is going green. Kern Studios, the largest producer of Carnival floats, reduced the impact on the environment by using biodiesel in the tractors pulling floats along the parade routes in 2008.

In addition, Hotard, one of the area’s leading providers of motor coach transportation, is switching to a greener fleet. The company has begun to introduce new motor coach models that cut particulate matter, black smoke, by 90 percent. The company is investigating additional ways that it can go green, including the use of bio-diesel fuel.

These examples only scratch the surface.

Going Green is another component of our New Orleans Commitment to be the most meeting-friendly city in America. Just as we customize attendance-building tools or voluntourism projects to make meetings as successful as ever, we can customize a plan to achieve greener meetings. It’s good for the environment and it’s good for business.

Nikki Nicholson is the vice president of convention sales for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, www.neworleanscvb.com. She can be reached at nnicholson@neworleanscvb.com or 504-566-5040.