Green Your Meeting in San Francisco

Ceres Publication (Investors & Environmentalists): "Best Practices Survey" an easy-to-use list of criteria that helps a purchaser to assess a hotel's environmental commitment and performance. Using the survey enables decision-makers to choose hotels that meet all business needs, including their own environmental preferences. This tool also helps make the hotel industry aware of business demand for "green" accommodations.

Conventionplanit.com: How Green are your meetings? What are the latest practices in the area? Planners need to be ready to respond to this issue as it becomes increasingly important throughout society and demonstrate how they are making their meetings "greener". Check out the articles below for some ideas and best practices.

Rainforest Alliance: The "Guide for Sustainable Tourism Best Practices" is meant to be a facilitating tool for community businesses and for small and medium entrepreneurs to adopt specific actions that allow them take the needed steps to carry out and manage sustainable development.

The Global Green Hospitality Consortium (GGHC): Was founded to provide the hospitality industry with the resources needed to implement sustainable standards and practices offered by various green associations, State, and federal programs such as EPA Green Partnership, Energy Star and US Green Building Council's LEED certification.

American Hotel & Lodging Association Good Earthkeeping Program

BlueGreen Meetings: Is a multi-stakeholder initiative spearheaded by Oceans Blue Foundation. Created in 1996, and with offices in Vancouver (Canada) and Seattle (USA), Oceans Blue Foundation is an environmental charitable organization with the mandate of conserving coastal environments through environmentally responsible tourism. It is the first charity in North America to focus on developing environmental 'best practices' for all sectors of the tourism industry.

California Hotel & Lodging Association Energy Efficiency Resources: information on energy efficiency, incentives and rebates, benchmarking of energy use, and hotel case studies.

Flex Your Power: Significant rebates and incentives may be offered through your local utility that can help offset up-front costs for many energy- and water-saving measures. Provides an easily searchable database of money-saving rebates, grants, and loans for commercial customers in California. Best Practices Guides from Flex Your Power (specific guides for hotels, restaurants and commercial office buildings).

Green Restaurant Association Environmental Guidelines

Peninsula Hotel Nonprofit Collaborative: a partnership between hotels and nonprofit organizations located on the San Francisco Peninsula serving San Mateo County. The primary focus of this group is to facilitate reuse and sharing of resources.

PG&E Energy Savings & Rebates: Energy analyzers and audits, energy saving tips, and incentive/rebate programs by industry.

Small Business Energy Alliance: Provides lighting, air conditioning, refrigeration recommendations and state-subsidized retrofit grants to help small businesses in Napa, Marin, Sonoma, Solano and Lake Counties conserve energy.

The Environment Division of the Caribbean Hotel Association: "Starter Kit" which includes 5 Videos for hoteliers dedicated to becoming greener. Environmental management is extensively described in the first video. Individual videos focus on the 3 critical elements: energy, water, and solid waste. A fifth video deals with preventative maintenance issues.

Certification Resources

Bay Area Green Business Program: Become a certified Green business (outside San Francisco).

California Green Lodging Program: resources for hotels (California Integrated Waste Management Board).

Green Seal: Find certified cleaning products, paper, paint, flooring and other commonly used business items.

San Francisco Green Business Program: Become a certified Green business (within San Francisco can last for up to three years).

U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED)

San Francisco Department of the Environment Foodservice Waste Reduction Ordinance: Effective June 1, 2007, the Food Service Waste Reduction Ordinance requires that San Francisco restaurants and food vendors serving food prepared in San Francisco no longer use any polystyrene foam, otherwise known as Styrofoam, as disposable food ware. The ordinance also requires that any disposable food service ware or to-go containers be compostable or recyclable for food prepared and served in San Francisco, unless there is no suitable product that is within 15% of the cost of non-compostable or non-recyclable alternatives. The site includes a list of vendors of acceptable product.