Labor Day Weekend Retreat Goes Green

Earlier this month over 180 men attended the annual California Men’s Gathering at Camp Newman in Santa Rosa. Little did they know I had spun my green web and they were temporarily caught between organic spinach and re-useable water bottles. No one was asked to become vegan or to use composting toilets, however, everyone was asked to do things a little differently. Some of the other 9 men on the planning committee for this gathering were initially skeptical of my green ideas, but quickly they became my strongest supporters, each figuring out how to green their respective areas of responsibility.  We weren’t entirely sure how well these new ideas would be received by the 170+ participants, but fortunately, instead of a revolt, we created a mini, green revolution. The mantra was REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, OFFSET, and the result was one giant step in the right direction:

REDUCE

Waste/recycling was reduced about 90%:

• Over 3,000 individual plastic bottles & cans were replaced with 180 nice stainless steel (sigg-type) bottles and vats of freshly mixed iced tea, lemonade, and cranberry juice with fresh organic mint garnish (of course!) Hopefully these bottles go on to live a long life, saving tens of thousands more plastic bottles. Did you know that 83% of all recyclable plastic bottles end up in the garbage? This is even true in green California! Click here to read about the other problems with plastic water bottles. Greening our event had lots of unexpected side benefits, too. For example, do you know how much 3,000 bottles of water and soda cans weigh? 180 men X .5 gal/person/day X 3 hot days X 8.34lbs/gal = 2,252 lbs or 1.12 tons! And how much of a hassle it is to rent a U-Haul truck, load a literal ton of beverages at Costco, drive it 60 miles to the weekend camp site, unload a ton of beverages, and then reload any excess bottles/cans at the end of the weekend, unload, and refuel/return the truck? I’d rather get my workouts at the gym, thank you very much. By going green, we put all our beverage makings (4 dispenser jugs, beverage powder/tea bags, frozen concentrate, lemons and mint garnish) for almost 200 men in the trunk of a sedan. By relying on the filtered, pure fresh water at Camp Newman, our beverage solution was significantly healthier, cheaper, hernia-proof, and by the way, GREENER, too.
• Styrofoam cups/plates and plastic utensils were replaced with washable plates/utensils at meals and biodegradable coffee cups to go. Of course, natural stevia and honey were available in addition to those fabricated sweeteners.
• The majority of men survived a summer weekend without air conditioning just fine.
• We had 2 volunteer ride share coordinators. An estimated 57 ride shares (2-5 people/vehicle) were arranged in advance — reducing car-related emissions by ~75%. Since 1/3 of the attendees had never been to one of our gatherings before, a side benefit to ride sharing was that many men were able to meet others who lived near them and would start their weekend with those new friendships in place.
• Mostly local and some organic food replaced standard commercial food for all meals throughout the weekend. We offered a fresh salad bar stocked with local fresh vine ripened tomatoes among other colorful treats, and we dined on local, free range chicken with local portobello mushrooms while increasing our food budget by a bearable 10%-15%. We also reduced consumption of beef and pork – everyone seemed to like the turkey bacon with their scrambled free range eggs. Unfortunately, the camp’s kitchen had little experience with organic food sources, so didn’t get nearly as much organic food as we had hoped. We did, however, verify that the majority of food was local within 75 miles – which is more than half the battle (at least from a carbon perspective). We also believe we have planted seeds for some green, permanent change at Camp Newman, especially in their kitchen. In today’s global market, food typically travels 1,600 to 2,500 miles on its way to your plate. “If we’re not paying attention to what we eat, thanks for driving the Prius, but get the Hummer out of your kitchen,” says low-carbon food expert Helene York. Read more here.
• At our events we provide a 24 hour snack bar that in past years was basically a free ad for Coca-Cola and Herseys. To the chagrin of many underemployed dentists, this year we featured fresh and dried fruits, nuts, organic granola bars, iced filtered tap water, unsweetened raspberry iced tea, and a bevy of other healthy yet tasty options.
• A green living workshop was offered among the 35 workshops held during the weekend, attendees posted their suggestions on a Green Idea Bulletin Board during the weekend, and all 180 attendees were sent green living tips in a follow-up email.
• For the first time, our event t-shirts were made from 100% organic cotton, made in the USA within 500 miles of our camp site, instead of the usual petroleum fertilizer-feed cotton shirts made 7,000 miles away in China.
• Promotional post cards for the event were printed on paper from FCS-certified forests. The 40 page program guides were printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
• Instead of cars, electric golf carts were used to shuttle supplies around the sprawling campsite as well as to help those who are differently-abled get to geographically dispersed workshop sessions.

REUSE

• We gave attendees nice messenger bags with an embroidered (not screen printed) logo. These bags were a hit over the weekend, and they are likely to have a useful post-gathering life as a gym bag, briefcase, grocery bag, or just all around trendy man-bag.

RECYCLE

• We reduced usage so much that we not only had much less waste, we had much less to recycle. Unfortunately, many of our giveaways (messenger bags, stainless steel water bottles, notepads, pens, etc.) came with an embarrassing amount of packaging. We had 3 volunteers who sorted/folded/toted plastic/paper/cardboard/waste, primarily during our first day of set-up. We even took up a surprisingly large collection of dead/weak flashlight batteries to dispose of properly (at Walgreens).

OFFSET

Finally, we calculated our estimated carbon footprint with the assistance of carbonfund.org (we estimated our collective transportation and energy-related emissions, including those related to the year-long planning of the event), and 32 tons of carbon offset was purchased from the carbonfund.org to fund renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects.

OTHER

There were plenty of other activities at the gathering that complemented the green experience. For example, over 50 men participated in one of three Native American sweat lodge ceremonies. Basically a sweat lodge is a ceremony of purification and prayer that takes place in a sacred tent where participants speak from their hearts about their lives, their connections to people and the planet, as well as their concerns. In the steamy heat and darkness of the lodge, we come closer to ourselves, closer to spirit, and closer to the earth. Not surprisingly, the need and opportunity to lead a more authentic and greener life came up in some manner in every sweat lodge ceremony.

ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO GREEN THEIR EVENTS

1) It takes education and planning. I worked closely with a planning team of 9 other men over a 10 month period. Those who originally gave me that doubtful “what you talking about?” look, have become strong green advocates. Going green is contagious (in a good way!)

2) It’s not just about carbon offsets. That should be your last step, after you’ve done everything you can to reduce your event’s footprint.

3) It helps to find creative green solutions that don’t cost any more than traditional approaches. Some green ideas will increase your expenses, but you should be able to come up with interesting green cost savings that offset those additional costs, with the overall goal of yielding not just carbon neutrality, but budget neutrality, too.

4) Stop that nasty limited thinking about green being more expensive and less convenient. Sometimes it is, but it doesn’t always have to be. Instead visualize how being green can add significant value to the experience of your attendees, and indeed, even permanently impact their lives in a positive way. With the same per person budget used for our past events, we reduced waste 90% and our attendees happily left with an eco SWAG bag (a nice messenger bag, a quality stainless steel water bottle, 100% recycled note pad, coupons for massage/spa treatments, and green living tips by follow-up e-mail). We decided to charge a small “green tax” to each attendee which funded our offsets – in order to raise the visibility of what we were doing. Also, it was an easier sell to the planning team by saying we could substantially green the event without negatively impacting the existing budget plan.

5) Start early and work closely with your facilities staff – including property management, janitorial, and kitchen teams. Bring them onto “your virtual green team” and acknowledge their extra efforts publicly at the beginning of your event.

6) Of course, there’s a wealth of info on the web. A simple google search for ‘green event’ returns a mere 153 million hits. Everyone from the EPA to Greenpeace thinks they have something to say about green meetings. I thought many sites had too much of a focus on offsets while others were too focused on promoting their green product or green service. The resources that I found most useful were:

• The Green Meetings Report, put out by the Convention Industry Council, is more of a comprehensive green meeting guide, than a report.
• The other thing that I found handy was a checklist for green meetings put together by someone at Duke University. Parts of it are specific to the University, but I think it’s one of the better checklists out there.

MURPHY’S LAW

As perfectly green as things seemed to most attendees, there were a few dirty devils in the details. Here are just two stories to give you a flavor for the browner side of our gathering.

There was the summer afternoon ice cream social – nice idea, but much to my dismay the kitchen staff started serving scoops into styrofoam bowls. The very nice and competent server didn’t really seem to understand why I wanted her to switch to washable dishware and very innocently she even tried to explain the benefits of not having to wash regular bowls since these were disposable. Somewhere between my distressed stories about how those bowls will still be in landfill in 500 years and how EPA studies show alarming levels of toxic styrene migration into our food, she finally caved and off she went to fetch washable bowls. Click here if you want to learn a few of the reasons why we absolutely must avoid styrofoam. About 75 mouth watering servings later they ran out of clean bowls. The kitchen dishwashers made several futile attempts to keep up with the drooling, ice cream-crazed faces in line. Eventually in the interest of not keeping their anxious ice cream lovers waiting, the well meaning kitchen staff abandoned bowl washing entirely and I suppressed my horror as countless styrofoam bowls began to dance across the room. It’s hard to believe these bowls which enabled so many smiling ice cream moustaches were slowly spreading their styrene poison to my brothers on their path to creating a permanent pile of off-white toxic landfill.

Then there was the task of finding a printer who would affordably do a rush print of our 200 forty page program booklets on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. After 2 days of diligently verifying that every printer (including Kinko’s Fed-Ex) in the greater Palm Springs area couldn’t even spell “post-consumer recycled paper”, a personable and eco-friendly (but unnamed) San Francisco printer bent their rules for us and agreed to do the 2 day job overnight. To make a long story short, they screwed up the job, causing the entire job to be re-printed (at their expense), using twice the paper (albeit 100% recycled paper), ink and energy – not to mention causing me to grow twice as many grey hairs waiting for the job to finish so I could get to the camp site. This printing debacle could have been prevented by avoiding the last minute nature of the project. Don’t let a lack of advance planning wreck havoc with your green plan.

SUMMARY

Don’t worry, I won’t end this post with the things that went wrong–not after so much went right! Most importantly, we widened the circle of those participating in the green revolution. I believe we successfully left a small indelible green mark on the souls of our 180 gathering participants, on Camp Newman and their staff, and on the various suppliers/vendors who we used and didn’t use because they weren’t green enough. Viva la revolution!