At GreenBlue, we all do our best to “walk the sustainability walk” in our daily lives at home and at the office. In the past we have even had intra-staff challenges that involved sustainability actions like bringing our own containers to coffee shops and lunch spots for take-out food, eating more fruits and vegetables, collecting compostable waste in the office, and spending more time outside on a daily basis.
We spend our professional lives thinking about sustainability, but that doesn’t stop when we walk out our office door. We do our best to host sustainable conferences, too. What does that mean? First, we look for hotels that offer their own suite of sustainable practices, such as not laundering sheets and towels daily unless requested. We prefer to locate our meetings in a city center that is available by public transportation and allows attendees to walk to restaurants, shops, and sites. Our instructions to the hotel’s catering staff might also be seen as a bit strict sometimes: we require that water is served in pitchers or coolers with reusable glassware, cream and sugar are served in bowls instead of individual packets, coffee and tea are provided in ceramic cups with spoons instead of disposable cups and stirrers, sustainable seafood choices and local products are specified wherever possible…and the list goes on.
