Meeting News - January 5, 2009 - (Page 22)

Green Beat By Terri Hardin terri.hardin@nielsen.com You Had the Meeting, Now Here’s the Compost Washington State Convention & Trade Center says, ‘You can take it with you’ Meeting attendees who are used to being surrounded by name badges and sponsored coffeecup wrappers may be startled to be handed postmeeting detritus as a parting gift—made into compost and bundled with seeding pots made out of cow manure. But this past holiday season, Seattle’s Washington State Convention & Trade Center sent its clients a 100-percent sustainable flower-growing kit, containing a small bag of “Post-Meeting Special Blend” compost, a package of locally sourced flower seeds, and three “Cow Pots.” Michael McQuade, the center’s director of sales and marketing, noted,“For years, we sent gifts that represented the exceptional capabilities of our culinary team or Washington’s wonderful wines. This holiday season, we decided to thank our clients for their business by giving an eco-friendly gift that is not only fun to receive and use, but also represents the center’s longtime leadership in the area of recycling and sustainability.” McQuade said Stephen Gould Corp., a Whippany, NJbased packaging company, was “a real asset, in finding the different products and being costeffective.” According to Art Miranda, a Seattle-based sales manager for Stephen Gould and the point person on the project, a similar program could cost between $10 and $20 per package,“depending on how environmentally conscious you want to be.” In WSCTC’s case, the paper is forest-certified—meaning that it can be traced back to whence it grew; the inks are soy-based, the peanuts are starch, and the manure pots are “very unique,” said Miranda. “Molded and dried, they have no smell. Definitely not like you’d think.” Institute That Will Administer LEED Certification for Buildings Taps USGBC VP as President This year, the Green Building Certification Institute will begin administering the LEED certification process for buildings. The GBCI was launched last year to administer certification and credential programs related to green-building practices and to ensure that the LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP) program continues to be developed in accordance with best practices for credentialing programs. In November, GBCI announced that Peter Templeton will be its president. In his former role at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), Templeton was vital to the early development of the LEED green-building certification system, the launch of the LEED AP program, the expansion of USGBC’s educational programming, and the successful spin-off of GBCI. Most recently, Templeton was USGBC’s senior VP of education and research, leading the annual Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, LEED training and professional certification programs, and greenbuilding research initiatives. “I am honored to join the founding team of GBCI,” said Templeton. “Our mission is to administer in a way that is scalable to meet everincreasing capacity and demand while maintaining the highest levels of quality and integrity.” Prior to joining USGBC, Templeton worked as a project manager and environmental planner directing sustainable development, environmental education, and land-use management programs in the U.S. and abroad. He has a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning. H Travelport Adds Eco-Care to Its Services Now, corporate planners can benchmark carbon emissions along with costs In December, Travelport GDS announced a global marketing alliance with the Hotel Carbon Index Co. Ltd. to employ the latter’s CarePar (“carbon emissions per available room”) system that gathers carbon emissions data and calculates either emissions per available hotel room per day, or emissions per function room per half-day. As a global distribution system (GDS), Travelport operates both the Galileo and Worldspan platforms, providing real-time travel information and booking capabilities to online and offline travel agencies in over 145 countries. It also runs Travelport Business Intelligence, which provides marketing and other critical data to the industry, and IT Services & Software, which offers missioncritical reservations, related software, and services management to leading airlines. As part of the agreement, Travelport will include CarePar hotel data in its products, including Carbon Tracker. The integration of CarePar and Carbon Tracker will allow corporations to look at the full carbon footprints of travel itineraries that also include data on air travel and ground transportation. This helps companies benchmark the success of their corporate social responsibility programs. “This landmark agreement within the GDS industry comes at a time when hotels, corporations, and travelers the world over are looking to get behind programs that are better for the environment,” said Peter Ducker, founder of the Hotel Carbon Index Co. “This is another bold initiative by Travelport that will lead the hotel sector into a regime of benchmarking and measuring emissions, and help hotels and their guests calculate their true carbon footprints.” 22 MeetingNews January 5, 2009 www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - January 5, 2009

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