Greening Greenprints
By Susie Trinh and Shannon Gray, Southface Interns
While Southface has always taken our commitment to hosting green events seriously, this year we set a goal to define specific metrics for Greenprints to measure our success. We asked Susan Garrett, Southface Commercial Green Building Services Project Manager and LEED AP, to coordinate the efforts. Because of the energy and food consumption levels at such a large event, greening a conference poses an unusual challenge for planners and hosts alike. Susan spoke with us about the greening process and explained the importance of seeing beyond the built environment when we try to be green.
Why did Southface decide to put in extra time and effort this year to green the Greenprints Conference?
Susan Garrett: We were driven by the necessity of reducing our fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions to avoid climate change. Based on the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report that came out Feb 2nd, the extent of the energy use reduction and change that we need to make in our lifestyle and business choices is very far-reaching and it needs to happen quickly.
What are your goals for greening the conference?
SG:
- Eliminate solid waste
- Minimize fossil fuel usage
- Optimize transportation to reduce our carbon footprint
- Be carbon neutral
- Use eco-friendly goods and products
- Promote social sustainability.
How did you choose these goals?
SG: Research on sustainability shows that the largest unsustainable practices and flows of resources are occurring in the Energy, Transportation and Agriculture sectors. It was clear Southface would need to focus on these areas and I wanted conference participants to get excited about the effort. I brainstormed with Southface, the Westin and Eventologie staff. Out of this came a list of specific strategies for people to work toward. I took that list of great ideas and categorized them into six main goals for the conference.
Where do you think you’ve had the biggest impact?
SG: I think our effort to green transportation will have the biggest impact on reducing carbon emissions - if people use the resources we put in place. GreenRide donated their services to provide a comprehensive green transportation planning website. Attendees can set up an account, coordinate carpools (even from out of state!), plan a bike route to the conference and get information about how to use public transportation in Atlanta. By using the site, they become eligible to win prizes, such as a year’s worth of green tags from Renewable Choice to offset their family’s carbon emissions. Cyclists are also eligible to win a Camelback water bottle and other prizes donated by the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign. For our site tours, we are hiring Emory University‘s biodiesel fueled buses. We hope these efforts will cut fossil fuel use and associated emissions for transportation in half.
You mentioned “green tags.” What are green tags and what do you mean by “offset carbon emissions?”
SG: Electricity is fed into the national grid from all energy sources – coal, hydropower, nuclear, wind, photovoltaics, etc. Right now, because of the way subsidies are structured and the lack of accounting for environmental impacts, renewable energy-sourced electricity is more expensive to generate. Green tags or renewable energy certificates (RECs) represent the added cost of producing a kilowatt hour of electricity, for example, from wind. When you purchase green tags from Renewable Choice, you guarantee that clean, 100% renewable wind power has been added to the grid in an amount equal to the electricity you purchased from your provider. In our area, most of our electricity comes from coal, so any time we flip a switch we are contributing CO2 to the atmosphere. Buying green tags “offsets” our production of CO2 by supporting wind farms, so that overall the grid is getting greener. Renewable Choice has donated green tags to offset all carbon emissions from the conference, the Visionary Dinner, and all attendees’ transportation to and from the conference.
What green measure do you feel most excited about?
SG: GreenRide’s site will quantify the amount of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds avoided by our conference attendees when they use the site to arrange alternate transportation. I also like that we will be weighing the amount of food, plastic, cans, etc. we prevented from going to the landfill through our composting and recycling efforts.
What was particularly fun or interesting about greening the conference?
SG: It’s been great working with Cindy Moore at the Westin and April Milliken Trigg and Kim Casey of Eventologie to plan for zero waste. We’ll be training the Westin’s catering staff and our volunteers how to compost and recycle everything from the conference. This required a lot of planning – everything from how to package individual lunches without throwaway plastic to planning the Westin’s orange juice purchases to be in recyclable containers.
What challenges have you encountered along the way in greening the conference?
SG: Figuring out how to compost one thousand pounds of food waste! Atlanta does not have a central composting facility; Fred Conrad of the Atlanta Community Food Bank will pick up all of our compost and use it for a composting workshop.
Another challenge was trying to green our menu on a tight budget. We finally decided to carefully select from the Westin’s set menus to avoid any endangered fish species.
What do you hope conference attendees will learn as a “take home message” from the greening of the Greenprints Conference?
SG: I would be delighted if every single conference attendee responded to our call to action with a committed pledge to do one of the items on our list of recommendations.
