Phil Ecclestone, VP of Golden Planners. (Darren Brown, OBJ)

The trend towards "going green" is being seen in most industries these days and the city's meeting planners are no different. An awareness of environmental issues is changing how they do business, but local industry representatives say cost and convenience often win out over ecological choices.

The move towards green meetings in Canada has been in the works since the early 1990s when awareness started to grow about the environmental cost of conventions. Meeting planners, suppliers, host hotels and destinations were encouraged to make meetings and events as environmentally responsible as possible, says Shawna McKinley.

A consultant on the issue for the meetings industry, Ms. McKinley used to be a program manager with the Oceans Blue Foundation, an environmental charity based in Vancouver. She helped with the launch of the group's free interactive Website about green meetings in 2002 that is still being used by the U.S. Green Meeting Industry Council. It provides resources and tips on choosing environment-friendly cities, selecting accommodations and facilities, general office procedures, transportation and food and beverage. Environment Canada has also been a good source for information about green meetings.

"In Canada, we're especially seeing it at the large scale international events and this past June in Vancouver where they held the World Urban Forum, the government of Canada was involved in mandating that as a green meeting," says Ms. McKinley.

"The local planners who were involved with putting it together used a lot of the strategies used before and really raised the bar."

She says the 2010 Olympics are another example of a large-scale environmentally responsible event, with the organizers pledging to produce a sustainable Games.

"The meeting industry is starting to pay more attention to the issue and it's a realistic challenge because people want to do it for the right reasons, but the cost issues do come into play," adds Ms. McKinley. "However, people are also realizing that green events offer a competitive advantage and an evolution is starting to happen in the way planners are packaging events."

Ottawa-based planners are also reporting a move towards more responsible behaviour, says Ian Garland, vice-president of DMC Ottawa, one of the larger event planners in town.

"People are sending out far less paper and we're seeing a push for recycling at events and the use of silver and china, instead of polystyrene and throw away cups and utensils," he says. "It's been a trend across the industry with the hotels, convention centres and other suppliers being responsive and some of them were frontrunners in providing alternatives. We do get client groups who say they only want to use a certain hotel for those reasons."

Mr. Garland says he often refers to a popular resource book called "How To Plan Meetings That Don't Cost The Earth" and he has heard of planners who even choose the airlines they work with based on how they address noise, atmospheric emissions, fuel and waste.

At Golden Planners in Ottawa, vice-president Phil Ecclestone says they too are seeing more green thinking at events, especially with paper production.

"Fewer and fewer events are being promoted by the traditional mail-out of a flyer with the registration information," he says. "In times gone by, proceedings would be a big thick book of printed papers and now that is more likely to be posted on the web or on CD. Instead of printing everything for everybody, we also try to print papers for the people who signed up for that workshop."

He says his company, which usually organizes hotel-based events for groups of 200-500 people, also sees a marked increase in the green interest level when dealing with environmental or government groups.

Mr. Ecclestone adds that although there have been discussions that the latest technology involving webcasts and podcasts might make conferences obsolete, he's finding this isn't true.

"Despite any concerns, whether they are ecological or cost-related, nothing replaces face-to-face communication and I'd say there probably are more meetings than ever before," he says. "In terms of selecting a conference, I think ecological reasons aren't going to be the determining factor. Nowadays, there aren't as many dollars in people's budgets so it has to used wisely and in general I think people base it on content and overall cost."