Change Makers

Margaret Mead, a U.S. anthropologist, famously said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." This tenet holds true for a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens from corporate titan Oracle. They have totally revolutionized OpenWorld, the world's largest information technology event, sponsored by Oracle, the world's largest business software company.

"Unbreakable" was the multinational computer technology company's marketing slogan for years. Although Oracle got away from this claim, realizing that calling your code "unbreakable" is like having a bull's eye on your product, one thing that is breakable is the environment.

Judy Sim, chief marketing officer; Paul Salinger, vice president, corporate marketing; Tania Weidick, vice president, events marketing; and Jodi Morrison, senior director, event marketing technology and operations, decided to do their part by ensuring OpenWorld is a sustainable event.

It's ironic that none of these four Oracle executives have sustainability as a formal job function. Salinger, who has taken his commitment to the environment one step further by joining and eventually becoming a member of the board of the Green Meeting Industry Council, explains, "I'm passionate about sustainability, which has led me down this path as an evangelist leading this effort and being on the board of an outside association working to change the whole events industry."

And change is necessary. "The events industry is the second-largest generator of waste behind engineering and construction. We need event leaders to become part of the solution as opposed to being part of the problem," asserts Salinger. Data shows that at a conference, a person on average generates 20 pounds of waste per day. At home, that person only generates five pounds of waste."

Grassroots to Corner Office

Greening OpenWorld started as a grassroots effort. It is now readily accepted by management.

Some have the misconception that greening a meeting doesn't make economical "cents." Just the opposite is true. "OpenWorld saved $800,000 in 2009. They now have full management buy-in, plus it's good for the company image," says Nancy J. Wilson, CMP, principal of Portland, OR-based MeetGreen, which helps plan sustainable meetings and events. Just planning OpenWorld is mind-boggling let alone greening it. Held in San Francisco's Moscone Center from October 11-15, 2009, there were about 40,000 attendees, 401 exhibiting companies, and 76 hotel properties contracted for a total of 55,472 room nights.

To be successful, Oracle had to get buy-in from all of its vendors. "We're proud of their willingness to adopt this as a core value and their hard work at making these changes. Some of them are not easy. To take a 40,000person conference and turn it into something where sustainability is the core part of standard operating practice is amazing," says Salinger.

Weidick elaborates. "It's nice to all be able to collaborate. It's a warm, fuzzy feeling to think we're all doing this together for a good reason."

The "team" includes the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau; Moscone Center; Savor, a catering and event services company; Champion Exposition Services; George P. Johnson, an experience marketing agency; Hartmann Studios, an experiential design and production company; and InVision Communications.

The Moscone Center was the ideal venue for the conference as sustainable practices are at its core. Since 2008, Moscone has replaced all disposable food and beverage service items with certified compostable items. It also boasts one of the most aggressive convention center waste-diversion programs, and is the site of one of the largest (675 kilowatt-hours peak) municipally owned solar-generating systems in the nation.

Many of the processes these companies created for OpenWorld are now part of their standard operating procedures. "Many now have things in place others in the event community can take advantage of," says Salinger.

As an advocate of environmentally friendly change, Salinger invited other members of the industry to tour OpenWorld and see what initiatives had been put into place.

"He invited fellow meeting planners from the San Francisco area to do a site tour of the conference — even competitors. They are true leaders who are sharing what they are learning and not holding it to themselves, which is fabulous. That's what we have to do: all learn from each other," implores Wilson. "He's not doing it for the PR. He's trying to help other people learn how to help the planet." Salinger is someone who walks the talk. At home, he composts, recycles, tends a vegetable garden, and eats locally grown produce purchased at farmer's markets. He conserves his energy and water usage and offsets all of his personal travel.

The Bottom Line

Just eliminating bottled water at OpenWorld saved the company a whopping $1.5 million, reports Salinger. That number is derived by estimating the approximately 40,000 attendees would have five to six bottles of water during the course of the event.

Although implementing eco-friendly techniques saved money in some areas, in others it was more expensive. "There are some tradeoffs," says Salinger. "For instance, it was more expensive to use soy ink on post-consumer recycled paper for our conference guide, but we reduced it from 400 pages to about 100."

Some of the notable successes at Oracle OpenWorld 2009 include:

• Diverting 140 tons of materials from landfills — enough to fill over 10 garbage trucks — through reduction, reuse, and recycling.
• Sourcing 60 percent of food items from within a 100mile radius of San Francisco.
• Five percent of signs were reused from 2008, and 37 percent of signs used in 2009 will be reusable for future events. Forty-five percent of sign inventory was donated or recycled after the event. Sixty-two percent of signage used recyclable or renewable substrates and 39 percent of signs were produced locally, with the remainder sourced in Los Angeles.
• Expanded walking routes to reduce shuttling to hotels and two new shuttle hubs to take advantage of mass transit. These new actions resulted in 32 fewer shuttles being used, representing a 30 percent reduction from peak usage, reducing emissions by 18,000 pounds of carbon dioxide and fuel use by 800 gallons.
• Total energy use and emissions avoided through purchasing decisions amounted to 1.15 megajoules and 120,073 pounds of carbon dioxide, enough energy to power 12 American homes per year, and the emissions equivalent of removing 11 cars from the road for a full year.
• All partner communications in the exhibit hall is paperless.
• A Green Pavilion included, "Ready. Set. Connect." Pedal Charger stations where attendees pedaled bikes to charge cell phones, PDAs, and laptops.

Its efforts at sustainability didn't go unnoticed, as Oracle won an IMEX Silver Green Meetings Award last year.

Gauging the Impact

When creating a sustainable event strategy, Salinger says specific goals must be established that include how you can reduce the footprint of the event from an environmental and resource-management perspective. Oracle was able to gauge the success of greening OpenWorld with the help of MeetGreen's "calculator."

Sustainability was measured in nine categories: destination, venue, accommodations, food and beverage, transportation, A/V, exhibit production, marketing communications, and onsite office/practices. For each of the areas it evaluates, the MeetGreen Calculator compares specific event decisions with the greenest alternative practices.

Although many of the changes were "back-of-house," Salinger says it's important to inform attendees about what you are doing and why. "We didn't want them to think we eliminated bottled water because we're cheap. We wanted them to know that creating a completely sustainable conference is transformational. We also let them know it's not about saving money, it allows us to invest back into their experience of the event in meaningful ways that deliver value for them," explains Salinger.

OpenWorld has been on a gradual road toward sustainability. In 2007, plastic water bottles were eliminated and water stations were set up with recyclable compostable paper and plastic cups. Last year, vendors brought in five-gallon jugs of water that were used to fill reusable water bottles that attendees received. In 2009, trucked-in water was completely eliminated and municipal tap water was served.

Some of the initiatives implemented in OpenWorld are now being extended to all of the 6,500 meetings Oracle runs globally over the course of a year. A minimal meeting standard has been created, with which all of its events must comply.

"We learned early on that greening an event or being a sustainable conference is not a one-time thing, it's a journey," says Salinger. "We'll be on that journey for a good long while, until we get to the point of claiming carbon neutrality or zero waste potential, which, at this point, would be greenwashing things. We want to be careful of not claiming that until we reach certain levels."

In the future, OpenWorld would like to be a paperless conference. "We're a technology conference, there is less of a need for printouts. Most of our attendees have smartphones where we can send content," says Weidick. There are also plans to develop an offset program for those who fly to the conference.

Chartreuse, emerald, olive ... in a world of shades of green one thing is certain: OpenWorld is getting greener and greener.

Originally published April 1, 2010

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