Meetings Industry Soapbox

It’s easy being green from June 27, 2006

If the naysayers need more evidence that businesses can be both environmentally and economically friendly, Pineapple Hospitality has offered it. The environmental hospitality consulting company is now promoting a company that audits a facility’s waste disposal and recycling habits, as a firm with which hotels should do business.

The company, Midas Management Consulting, guarantees its clients that if after the audit they don’t save money, they don’t pay for the service. The company says it saves its clients an average of 37 percent on waste disposal expenses, and it asks little extra work from the client themselves.

Meeting planners can increase environmental stewardship by demanding that their event facility recycle, and Pineapple and Midas have made that request easier for a hotel to accommodate.

The meetings industry as a whole certainly plays a major role in resource use and waste production in this country. According to Pineapple president and founder Ray Burger, the approximately 4,700,000 hotel rooms in the U.S. generate about .2 cubic yards of waste per guest room, per week.  That’s 48,880,000 cubic yards of waste per year.

It’s time for planners and hotels to step up and take responsibility for their impact on the planet, and save some cash too.