It makes sense for Virginia Beach to focus on its green attributes because it sure has a lot of them. The Virginia Beach Convention Center is the first convention center in the country to earn LEED Gold Certification. A number of hospitality businesses in the city  have joined the “Virginia Green” program that sets standards for sustainability for businesses. Restaurants use biodegradable plates and cups. Hotels have recycling bins in guestrooms. The convention center has a vegetable and herb garden that the chef uses when preparing meals.

Sometimes it seems like going green can be difficult. It takes a lot of effort and money to update a house or business with Energy Star windows and appliances. It’s easier to print badges for a conference rather than invest in reusable ones that have to be collected at the end of an event. Exhibitors often ignore requests to bring more eco-friendly promotional materials. Trying to save energy sometimes costs extra time and money.

What I learned at Virginia Beach, though, is that it’s not necessarily about changing linens lightbulbs. It’s about changing habits and mindsets. It’s unrealistic to think that you can change the habits of your staff and your attendees overnight, but instituting small eco-friendly practices and sticking to them will eventually affect positive change. I learned this during my trip to Virginia Beach when I was taking a tour of the convention center with its general manager, Courtney Dyer. He was quick to point out the center’s climate-control heating and cooling system, energy-efficient lighting, eco-friendly cleaning supplies and enormous recycling bins near the rear loading docks. But it was a comment he made almost in passing that I thought summed up the real driver of the entire green movement.

Dyer arrived to his staff offices at the center one morning to find that all the trashcans underneath employee desks had been replaced with recycling bins. If a person had any trash, he or she had to get up and walk to a trashcan in the middle of the office. “At first it made me mad,” said Dyer, until he realized almost all the waste he produces every day can be recycled. He might have to get up to throw away a PowerBar wrapper, but almost everything goes into the recycling bin. “It starts small,” he said, as he stood on the loading dock of a convention center that’s been awarded a number of sustainability honors. But I realized that without people who are committed to putting eco-friendly ideas into practice, a green building is just a building. It’s the people who work there that truly make it an eco-friendly destination. Going green begins with a few small steps, and sometimes they’re steps to a trash can 30 feet from your desk.

By Lisa Plummer

There seems to be no stopping the green movement in the meetings and events industry. With more companies seeking to be identified as socially responsible and organizations adopting sustainability as part of their new culture, meeting green not only makes good environmental sense, but also good business sense for the industry as a whole. Now more than ever, meetings destinations, hotel and convention properties, and industry organizations are gearing up for the future, and that future appears to be a bright shade of green.

Cities jumping on the (green) bandwagon

When you think green destinations, you probably picture model cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, communities that have established strong infrastructures for supporting sustainable practices, which extend to their convention and hospitality industries. With progressive recycling, energy conservation and waste management programs, cities such as these appear to have little difficulty attracting the environmentally conscious meeting planner.

Yet, as more and more organizations select sites for their events based on a city’s level of green practices, destinations are recognizing that they’d better start thinking and acting green or lose potential business. As a result, several cities across the country are working harder than ever to put green practices in place and get the word out that environmental stewardship is important to them, too. Here are just a few cities that have taken some recent strides in sustainability.

Virginia Beach, Va., is a city that aspires to be green through and through. Named the first “Virginia Green” destination in the commonwealth by the state’s Virginia Green environmental program, the city’s sustainable centerpiece is the Virginia Beach Convention Center (VBCC). Built green from the bottom up, the almost 3-year-old facility is pursuing LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification, which it hopes to achieve by the spring of 2010.

Upon completion, the facility will be the first LEED-certified convention center on the East Coast, joining an elite group of six convention facilities in the U.S.: the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pa; the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore., the Spokane Convention Center expansion in Spokane, Wash.; the Kansas City Convention Center Grand Ballroom in Kansas City, Mo.; the Phoenix Convention Center and the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Besides a host of green practices that include recycling, energy and water conservation and the use of locally grown, organic produce in catering, the VBCC also sports an on-site herb garden. This level of environmental consciousness also extends into the community itself, with more than 100 businesses, including hotels and restaurants, Virginia Green certified.

Surrounded by the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, the city of Asheville, N.C., is undergoing a green transformation. As more and more of the destination’s hospitality businesses adopt sustainable practices, Asheville is also turning more of its attention towards sustainable offerings for green meetings and events.

According to Dodie Stephens, PR manager of the Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB), “keeping it local” has been one of the city’s long-standing environmental values, including an emphasis on serving indigenous, locally grown food within its network of restaurants and hospitality-related businesses.

In keeping with the local focus, the ACVB recently launched an initiative called “The Asheville Offset” in partnership with local Warren Wilson College’s program, “Insulate!” According to Stephens, this “voluntourism” program gives meetings groups the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of their travel while helping fund the student volunteer program that weatherizes homes of citizens below the poverty level, free of charge.

“Natural beauty is part of Asheville and our local culture is infused with the desire to celebrate and protect it,” says Tim Lampkin, ACVB director of convention sales and group services. “The Asheville Offset allows attendees to reduce their carbon footprint in a way that directly reduces energy consumption on a local level.”

The city of Buffalo, N.Y., is charging ahead with its 2-year-old Buffalo Green Hospitality Initiative, “Green & Mean (It).” Created by the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau (BNCVB) in conjunction with more than 20 local hospitality partners, the goal of the initiative is to develop and maintain environmentally responsible practices and promote a green experience for tourists and convention guests visiting the region.

Sustainable practices include using local food and beverage products, an extensive recycling program, using renewable energy, banning Styrofoam, using recycled products and environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, donating unused foods to food banks and using state-of-the-art, energy efficient HVAC systems.

Greening Buffalo’s hospitality industry has been a smart, and timely, move for the destination, according to Cheryl Zanghi, director of services and special projects at the BNCVB.

“Going green is no longer a choice, but a requirement,” Zanghi says. “Industry research shows that over 67 percent of meetings professionals are looking for sustainable practices when considering holding an event in a particular city.”

This push towards a greener hospitality community extends to Buffalo’s individual hotel partners, and an example of greening in action has taken root at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Buffalo, in the form of a rooftop herb garden. Using soil made from composted hotel food scraps, the garden is irrigated by rainwater collected in rain barrels, and produces a variety of herbs that are used in the property’s culinary services.

Hotels: Growing greener

Along with hospitality companies such as Hyatt, Marriott International and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts boasting a variety of environmental, green meeting and social responsibility practices and programs, hotels across the country are also picking up the green pace by taking steps including adopting waste-reducing and energy-saving practices, earning green certifications and become socially responsible members of their local and global communities. Here are just a couple of examples of hotels working harder than ever to be kinder to the planet.

The city of San Francisco continues to be a pioneer in environmental practices, and this extends to its hospitality community. The city by the bay is also home to the San Francisco Hotel/Non-Profit Collaborative, a progressive, local industry-wide recycling and reuse network whose mission is to divert usable discards from the waste stream of hospitality organizations and donate them to non-profit, charitable organizations serving the community.

Started 13 years ago by Jo Licata, community projects manager at the Hilton San Francisco, the successful program now boasts the participation of approximately 20 large properties, including the Moscone Center and other hospitality business, as well as more than 20 non-profit organizations and office buildings. According to Licata, the informal, grass-roots organization has kept thousands of tons of discarded but usable goods and equipment out of landfill, and given them a second life in the non-profit community at no cost to local tax-payers.

“Throwing away all those beds, sofas, foam-core signs and giveaways costs money in labor and garbage bills,” Licata says. “Donating them to worthy causes not only saves money by making the problems ‘go away,’ but also goes a long way in creating a positive spirit of giving.”

Taking advantage of statewide Green Lodging programs and environmental certifications is becoming more and more important to hotels, so much so that some hospitality companies are designing and building new properties with sustainability in mind.

Completed last July, the Hotel Indigo San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is the first hotel property in San Diego to boast LEED certification. Built green through and through, the property possesses a host of environmental practices in its operations, including a property-wide recycling program, an on-site herb garden and a heat pump plant, and the use of locally grown food in catering. It plans to launch a new property management system at the end of the year that will allow the hotel to go paperless.

According to Pat McTigue, Hotel Indigo director of sales, although sustainability has been important to parent company InterContinental Hotels Group for some time, the new property is a physical example of that passion in action.

“(IHG has) had a sustainability page on its Web site speaking to our corporate responsibility,” McTigue says, “(but) this was our first opportunity to put our money where our mouth was.”

LEEDing the movement

For those new to the terminology, the Leadership In Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System is the international benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998, six convention centers and approximately 20 hotel properties in the U.S. have earned LEED certification thus far.

When you think of Las Vegas, you don’t exactly picture a green city, but one new resort property is about to bring sustainability to the Strip. Scheduled to open in phases beginning Dec. 1, 2009, the CityCenter megaresort is the first hotel, casino and resort property in Las Vegas to achieve LEED certification.

Owned by MGM Mirage, the 67-acre, five-resort and condominium development, which includes a tri-level, 300,000-sq.-ft. convention center, will be one of the largest sustainable developments in existence, according to company officials. Recently, the USGBC awarded Gold LEED certification to the resort’s flagship hotel tower at the Aria Resort & Casino, as well as to its convention center, theater and the Vdara Hotel & Spa.

Although LEED certification has helped dispel misunderstandings about what signifies an environmentally friendly building, confusion and mislabeling remain among industry members about what makes a meeting or event green. A select group of industry members and organizations joined forces and have been working for almost two years to establish uniform industry standards.

Enter the Convention Industry Council’s Accepted Practices Exchange Commission (APEX), the Green Meetings Industry Council, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), which are currently in the process of creating the APEX Green Meeting and Events Standard. With a task force of 50 all-volunteer members representing various sides of the meetings and convention industry, the APEX Green Meetings and Events Practice Panel expects the standard to be made available by the end of this year.

According to Amy Spatrisano of MeetGreen, chair of the APEX panel, the standard couldn’t come at a better time.

“People want a checklist, they want guidelines and they want specifics (about what is green),” Spatrisano says.

Whatever the pace of change, there seems to be no question that the environmental movement is on the agenda for meetings and events.