REPORT – IMEX 2006 – FRANKFURT: In recognition of the exceptionally high standard of entries for this year’s IMEX Green Meetings Awards, which were held in partnership with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) for the…
REPORT – IMEX 2006 – FRANKFURT: In recognition of the exceptionally high standard of entries for this year’s IMEX Green Meetings Awards, which were held in partnership with the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) for the first time, two separate awards have been made to winners.
At the same time, the IMEX Commitment to the Community Award has been presented to a British computer company, Computacenter Distribution (CCD).
Judges made the decision to present a Gold Award in honour of the meticulous level of ‘green’ planning and awareness building that went into the US Green Build International Conference and Expo 2004. They also chose to acknowledge the strong environmental achievements of the Sierra Club Summit 2005 (USA) with a separate Silver Award.
At the IMEX Gala Dinner, Kimberly Lewis received the Green Meetings Gold Award on behalf of conference organisers, USGBC (US Green Build Council), while the Silver Award was presented to Johanna O’Kelley of Sierra Club.
The Green Build Conference and Expo first won an IMEX Green Meetings Award in 2004 for their 2003 conference but, in the judges’ opinion, the USGBC went on to raise the bar even higher by setting itself ambitious environmental targets for subsequent conferences.
The USGBC’s strategy for its 2004 Green Build Conference was to enlist the help of the convention centre, hotels, caterers, exhibitors and decorators in minimising waste by reducing consumption, pollution and waste at source. All parties were asked to reuse and recycle materials where possible. If disposal was unavoidable, then this had to be carried out in a safe manner.
Outcomes for the 2004 event included a saving of US$25,000 through the use of water stations and compostable cups instead of water bottles. The USGBC also introduced a waste audit in partnership with Portland State University for the first time. The audit measured waste output at the Oregon Convention Centre and the hotel and showed that 48% of solid waste was recycled while 23.9% of food served was composted. An additional 3450 lbs of food was donated to a local community service organisation.
Says Amy Spatrisano of the Green Meeting Industry Council, The USGBC’s efforts to set goals and evaluate and track their efforts over previous years using specific measures to improve the environmental performance of Greenbuild sets a very high standard for green meetings. It’s one that we are very pleased to recognise and to celebrate publicly with this Green Meetings Gold Award.
Receiving this award is truly an honour, says Kimberly Lewis, Director of Conference & Events, US Green Building Council. USGBC`s mission of market transformation to green building encompasses all that we do including hosting our annual Greenbuild conference. Hopefully as Greenbuild moves from region to region, the knowledge gained from our green reports will strengthen the business case that an environmentally responsible conference can still be profitable.
Silver Award winner, The Sierra Club, was praised for introducing clear contract measures and achieving excellent waste management reduction at its first ever four-day annual conference, which took place in San Francisco in September 2005 and hosted 4,000 delegates.
African focus for Commitment to the Community Winner
The IMEX ‘Commitment to the Community’ Award, which was founded by the Louise Hall Reider Company, was won by a British entrant, Computacenter Distribution (CCD). This award aims to encourage and recognise organisations that run successful corporate social responsibility programmes.
Each year CCD invites its top performing business partners to join its staff for a short, sharp, high-energy overseas trip. David Hackett, Chairman of the company’s incentive travel organisers, BI, suggested a visit and donation to Mukuni village in Zambia as part of the trip. This soon turned into an offer to raise money to build a new teacher’s house once the village Chief explained the difficulty of attracting good teachers to the area due to poor accommodation. With a generous offer of matched funding from the group’s hotel, the Zambezi Sun, the CCD group eventually raised a total of US$10,000. Local villagers undertook the construction of the house, thereby keeping resources and skills in the community.
Says Mike Jones (formerly of CCD), The house has enabled the village Chief to recruit an additional teacher, who will provide the village children with a sound education, giving them the knowledge and skills to better support themselves, their families and their community. The village has fully embraced the development as a community project and we are delighted to have played our part.
Lee Driscoll, Sales Director of CCD added, The project is fundamentally about education, something that CCD and BI recognised as the basis for long-term success and sustainability. It is not a standalone, quick-fix solution, but a project that will have ongoing and long-term positive effects on the children, the village and local community as a whole. The project demonstrated that with vision, determination, commitment, teamwork and hard work, the lives of others really can be positively changed for the long-term. We hope that this project, and the acknowledgement of its success through receiving this award, serves to inspire and encourage others to do similar.
The award was jointly presented to Mike Jones, on behalf of CCD, and David Hackett of BI.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
