A few of us have been talking about going greener, taking as a specific example certain aspects of ASAE’s annual meeting in Chicago, where the big theme of the day was social responsibility. Lindy summarized some of the points yesterday. I thought that was a great post (and not just because she mentioned one of my comments - although that made me feel good too).
For some reason, this issue is starting to matter a lot to me - but I will preface this by saying that I am probably pretty average when it comes to caring about the environment. I do care, somewhat, but I’m no tree-hugger or eco-crusader. I love to drive my car, which has pretty good mileage, but my Santa Fe is no Prius. (Just got a new set of Yokohamas yesterday - whoo!!) I am in the process of changing all my lightbulbs in the house to fluorescents, but I don’t worry too much about turning lights off when I’m not in the room. I watched An Inconvenient Truth recently, and thought it was pretty interesting, but wished Gore would have backed up his graphs with actual numbers (see, here I am being Data Queen again!) instead of just fun arrows zigzagging upwards.
But I really did think that at a huge annual meeting like ASAE’s (huge to me, anyway - I know there are much larger), particularly given their “social responsibility” message, there was a quite a disconnect. I fully admit I did not pay too much attention to their “Wall of Social Responsibility”; I promise I will look into it more, since I have so far just dismissed it as a fundraising stunt. But I was not the only person who commented, at the time, about the Daily Now glossies. I thank Steve Smyth for his comment that these were partly recycled stock. But those trees are still dead and still in the trash. I saw hundreds of people glance at the papers as they walked into the convention center and throw them in the bin a few hallways further in without even breaking stride. Why not do an emailed Daily Now? Much easier, cheaper (free?) to produce, and would probably reach MORE people. I would bet money that at least 80% of attendees brought laptops with them to their hotel rooms. And I would also bet an even higher percentage have email-enabled phones - EVERYONE seemed to be Blackberrying between sessions. They don’t call ‘em “crackberries” for nothing. Gulo suggested doing mobile evaluations; why not mobile dailies?
I did think the printing stations were a great idea, for those who like to print their handouts. I know not everyone is the same in that respect. I hate handouts and did not print any of them, but I love the little notebook we got that I filled up with all my notes. I thought the several versions of the big program book were totally over the top (although I recognize ASAE probably got lots of advertising revenue from them), and I ended up using the little schedule in the front of the little notebook more than anything else.
The conference bags? They weighed a ton with nothing in them, and seemed really wasteful. My bag got left in my hotel room for the cleaning lady, who probably threw it out because she has about five hundred of them already. (And the reason I did not bring it home to give to my husband? He gets his own ones from the conferences he goes to!) Why not a lightweight cloth tote, like the kind you can reuse later on to put groceries in? (Again, I still go for plastic over paper; I don’t actually use those reusable totes. But maybe I would, If I got one at all the conferences I go to and could stash a few of them in the car!)
I know there should be options to please all kinds of people. But maybe if we were really given the choice at the time, and I mean specifically asked the question, in advance or at registration, more of us participants would choose to NOT take the bags, to NOT have the dailies in paper form, and to NOT get handouts (that’s already happening, which is great). I know these are only one tiny example in the grand scheme of social responsibility and going green, but I think it’s important.
