More than two years in the making, the Convention Industry Council's Accepted Practices Exchange process to create industry standards for green meetings in the past month has entered its final stretch and is on pace to be completed by the end of the year.
With the aid of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Green Meeting Industry Council, CIC's industry standards in recent months have undergone extensive comment and review.
In September, CIC submitted the industry-designed best practices to ASTM International, a body that develops international standards for materials, products, systems and services used in construction, manufacturing and transportation.
"We hope these will be the definitive standards for the meetings industry," said CIC COO Karen Kotowski. "All of our previous Apex standards have only gone through the Apex process, and so this is the first time we've had an outside entity to deal with."
Since EPA only can use "certified standards," the ASTM process would enable them to adopt the green meeting practices, she said, adding that the ASTM process "makes it more robust and larger than just our industry."
Much of the standards-making work has been done by nine committees, each responsible for developing green standards and measurements for separate meeting aspects, including accommodations, audiovisual, exhibits, food and beverage, venue and transportation.
CIC said through the standards it aims to create "a uniform measurement of environmental performance" for meetings and events.
By CIC's estimates, hundreds of participants in the past two years have commented or in some way contributed to shaping the green meeting standards.
"We tried to have a broad range of participants in the committees. We had planners. We had suppliers. Because of the EPA involvement, we made sure we reached out to the Society of Government Meeting Professionals. There's someone from the EPA on each committee, so it's been very inclusive," Kotowski said. "Add to that the broader audience of those that have participated in groups not only on the blog, but also on the ASTM side—they're not necessarily meetings people."
In its final round of industry outreach to help shape the standards before submitting them to ASTM, CIC last month took the final draft standards on the road and hosted "events akin to town hall meetings" in Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, Fort Myers, San Antonio, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Winnipeg. For those unable to physically attend, Apex opened a Web site to garner even more feedback.
"The committees have gotten feedback, and they're looking at the comments to see if they're persuasive and need to be incorporated, or if they need to have a conversation with the person who submitted the comment," Kotowski said. "That's the process we're working through right now. We anticipate sending them out in another ballot through ASTM by the end of November. Usually those ballots are open for 30 days, so we still are hoping to have all our work wrapped up by the end of the year."
Originally published Oct. 19, 2009