Earth Days are easy when environmental and social concerns are part of your everyday planning process.

Use your influence. Ask yourself if there's any one thing you could do to personally influence your event's environment or social impact, from the venues you choose, to the suppliers you hire, to the requirements you write in your RFPs.

Assemble your green team. Kick off event planning by identifying how suppliers, sponsors, staff and volunteers can collaborate to achieve sustainability goals. For tips on creating successful partnerships, the Green Meetings Industry Council is hosting a free webinar on April 14: See details and register here.

Change travel habits. Use incentives to reward people who choose more eco-friendly travel options to attend your events. You could offer vouchers or room upgrades to travellers who pair up to share a ride, or who take the train instead of a flight. At a green award-winning conference in Denmark, all delegates were given free passes for public transport, and 93% used them.

Look for the leaders. All other things being equal, lean toward vendors who have a track record when it comes to energy conservation, recycling, working with a local supply chain or supporting social causes. Favour those who can help you measure your event's impact, or who uphold an accredited standard.

Measure each drop of progress. When you think of your environmental bottom line, seemingly small things add up, so tally your results. A citywide conference of 2,200 delegates could conserve as much as 520 gallons of water over three days simply if catering staff are instructed not to pre-fill water glasses at banquet tables during lunches, calculates Meet Green.

Learn the standards. Even if you don’t know your ISO20121 from your BS8901, or your GRI G3 from your APEX/ASTM Environmentally Sustainable Meeting Standards, click through to become more familiar with each of these evolving event management standards: businesses will look to meeting and travel planners who can lead the way.

Find meeting planning ideas and more at ignitemag.ca. To share your own best practices with other readers, meet us on facebook or at IgniteMeetingsConnect.

INCENTIVES + MEETINGS
Pre-conference primer helps delegates prepare
We’re always on the lookout for conference promotion ideas we can share with meeting planners, and we found a good one right in our calendar for next week’s ACTE 2011 Global Education Conference in New York City. To give travel managers a clear idea of what to expect if they attend, conference organizers developed a What you need to know pre-conference primer (in PDF format) to highlight 10 of the hottest sessions planned. What we like: Not only does it provide a concise summary of each session’s content, it also links to additional articles/resources related to the topic. All in all, a simple but effective way to help delegates justify the benefits of attending.

CORPORATE TRAVEL MANAGEMENT
News from the department of dangerous footwear...
You recall from our last Ignite magazine cover that we like our shoes, so we’re delighted to hear — on behalf of all well-shod business travellers — that the ritual of removing them at airport security may soon be a thing of the past. According to a recent solicitation of interest posted on a US federal business opportunities website, The Department of Homeland Security is calling for development of a shoe scanning device system capable of “detecting threat objects concealed in footwear without requiring passengers to remove their footwear as they pass through a security checkpoint.”

Corporate Gifts + Rewards
Companies getting back to merit rewards: Survey
The impact of the recession on corporate rewards programs appears to be waning, according to a recent survey of mid-size to large employers in Canada and the US. In a flash survey, Towers Watson found growing intent for improved funding on merit rewards and short-term incentive programs, with projections on spending expected to hold steady in 2011. Summaries of both US and Canadian findings are available on the website.