Guardian Investor Services' green meetings effort targets RFPs and carbon emissions reduction.

Guardian Investor Services last month consolidated and centralized its meetings and events management team in order to standardize its meeting planning and purchasing processes and advance efforts to reduce carbon emissions generated from its meetings.

As part of those initiatives, the New York-based asset management subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is building a sustainability team to develop companywide programs as part of a broader corporate social responsibility effort.

Internally, Guardian's now-consolidated meetings team of eight has been at the forefront of using green practices. Three years ago, the company began using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 14-point green meetings plan that gives preference to hotels and meeting venues that are committed to environmental awareness and protection.

Since then, the company's meeting planners have adapted request-for-proposals forms to take into consideration the eco-friendliness of its service providers, including catering services, hotels and other venues.

All contracts now have addenda that require suppliers to recognize their requests for greener services and facilities, according to Guardian Investor Services events marketing specialist Kim Boriin, who also is vice president of education for the Financial & Insurance Conference Planners association and a member of several industry green practices development councils.

For example, Guardian requires catering service providers to adhere to the British Standards Institution's BS 8901 sustainable event management guidelines, which include nonprepoured beverages, recycling, donating unused food to local charities and limitations on bottled water.

The next step is to roll the program into the company's larger sustainability efforts and eventually begin tracking its meetings' carbon footprint.

"It's not just about the adjective, noun and verb 'green' anymore," Boriin said. "It's evolved so quickly. Three years ago, it was just about greening things, but now it's also about corporate social responsibility, community giveback and sustainability."

Boriin plans to bring those other CSR concepts into the meetings program through community engagement and using social media and other technology to drive awareness.

Boriin also is working on reducing the amount of printed information and marketing materials distributed at events and transitioning to digital storage devices, such as memory sticks.

"The financial services and insurance industries are usually among the slowest to embrace new trends," he said, "so we're kind of the late adopters."

Meanwhile, the meetings team consolidation has brought together planners from across the company's various business units into a "uniform distribution channel," according to Boriin.

While the transition gives Boriin and fellow meeting planners a platform on which to standardize the company's policies in line with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority rules and regulations that govern Guardian's more than 300 annual events, the combined program also is expected to generate savings.

"We are starting to leverage our services along with the other teams here at Guardian so that it is more of a drive to standardization and cost-effective planning," Boriin said, "so that if we are buying hotel nights for programs, we can look at the entire corporate buy and leverage that volume."

Originally published Nov. 16, 2009 This page is protected by Copyright laws. Do Not Copy