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Consider the thousands of events that take place in the Tampa Bay area, from the smallest to the largest, from the neighborhood Tupperware party to the Super Bowl. If there is a somewhat forgotten landscape for green, event management could be it.

Furthermore, the impact that could be gained locally would be enormous (of course depending upon how many people are engaged) and to take steps toward sustainable event management, whether it is your occupation or your hobby, is very easy if given the right direction.

One local event recently put some low cost sustainable event management practices into their operations.  Cure on Wheels, an endurance bicycle ride to raise money for Moffitt Cancer Center in just its second year, took several steps to reduce their carbon footprint and got great results. 

First, Cure on Wheels partnered with local sustainability organization the Sustany Foundation, and devised a plan that would be low cost, but also have significant impact on the stakeholders of the event.  The first thing they did was institute a recycling program to reduce waste at the home base on the campus of St. Leo University as well as at the five water stops along a 100+ mile route. 

The effort was benefited by St. Leo's single stream recycling system; however, volunteers ensured that all paper, plastics, and glass were separated from compostable food waste and non-compostable food waste.  Doing this, Cure on Wheels was able to divert more than 80 percent of their trash from landfills.  Furthermore, all of the compostable food waste, several pounds of it, was taken and donated to the Seminole Heights Community Gardens.

Other steps that the event took included obtaining two clean diesel vehicles from Crown Automotive in St. Petersburg in order to transport food and supplies to and from the water stops, purchasing only organic cotton tee shirts for their volunteers from dryTee, Inc., a local screenprinting company, and using FSC-certified recycled paper with non-toxic soy based inks for their printing needs. Organizers found almost exclusively local vendors for these products that were comparable in price to normal, non-recycled paper and toxic ink printers. 

Finally, when the event was over, the organizers donated several cases of Vitamin Water and some leftover non-perishable foods to other local charities and shelters. Organizers spent no extra money using local vendors and earth friendly products like organic cotton and recycled paper. This is just one example of how a local charity helped to green their event.

5 Ways to start greening your event:

1.   Use local products/vendors - The best option when throwing an event is to use local vendors who produce the goods locally; however, using local vendors that use non-local manufacturers is a next best alternative as we live in less of a manufacturing type of area than most of the country.  Using local products and vendors reduces the amount of fossil fuels that it takes to transport them across the state or nation.  Furthermore, you are providing money back into your local community.  And, finally, you often get much better customer service as your point of contact is generally not outsourced if a local company.

2.  Marketing - Marketing is usually a huge black eye regarding the impact to the earth, as it entails a great deal of paper, toxic inks, etc. that eventually get tossed away into our landfills.  So, while it would be great to be able to eliminate all of our paper needs in marketing, it is not practical.  So, what do we do?  The first thing is to use e-marketing as much as possible.  When that is not an option, if your target audience is not computer savvy, then use the highest grade post consumer waste recycled paper that your organization can afford.  Finally, marketing and education go hand in hand and it is imperative that you educate through your marketing efforts to all stakeholder groups that will be involved that sustainability is important to you.

3.  Food - The ideal scenario to make a difference would be to purchase locally grown, organically produced with sustainable farming methods produce; and local meats from free range animals raised without the use of antibiotics or growth hormones.  However, this is not always plausible.  Sometimes, because of budgeting or availability or product, concessions have to be made.  You have to decide if you want to concede the local part and obtain your food supplies from a Whole Foods or other large supplier of organic foods; or you want to purchase non-organic, but local food supplies.  However, doing any of these things will help your event be more sustainable and make an impact.

4.  Charity - Since often events entail guessing a number of attendees and how much those people will eat, it is important to have as part of your sustainability initiatives, a plan to donate the leftover food, perishable and non-perishable if possible.  Contact local food banks and homeless shelters to see if they can come by and pick up the food after the event, or if you have to transport it yourself.  Check with them what they will take ahead of time, even before you plan your menu and maybe you can tailor your food choices to what their needs will be. 

5.  Reduce and Recycle:  This may be a no-brainer to most of the readers, but nowadays there is no reason not to at the very least take the time to recycle.  The important thing with recycling is that it is made easy for people to do.  Clearly mark containers, educate volunteers and staff about its importance, and enforce it.  While recycling has become fairly common, reducing is really the way to go when it comes to greening your event. 

Often trinkets are given out as party favors, but seriously, we all know that no one actually uses them for anything after the fact.  If you are going to give out something, make a donation of $1 for each guest to a local charitable organization - that would have a greater impact in the community than a party favor that no one cares about.  Also, be cautious and/or more simple when decorating or purchasing items for the event.  Try to plan appropriately and only purchase what is really needed for the event. 

These five small steps are very cost effective for anyone from the average consumer to the largest corporation and can be done with relative ease.  There is really no good excuse for not instituting at least some of these measures in order to effectuate a triple bottom line result for your event.