 Greening up meetings should not be the responsibility solely on the meeting planner, but we should all take personal responsibility for our use of single-use items when we attend meetings and conferences. So this week's Two Minute Tip Tuesday, we're looking at the ways that we can impact meetings and sustainability. Hey friends, it's Leanne. So you may remember the story of a little boy who was walking on a beach and the beach was littered with thousands of starfish. And every now and again he would pick up a starfish and throw it into the ocean and clearly he wasn't going to save all the starfish, but the moral of the story is that he saved that one. And that's kind of what the theme of this week's post is. Is there so much promotion and talk about the elimination of single-use items and single-use products that we might often think, well, how is my use of these products going to actually make a difference in the world when literally millions and millions and millions of water bottles are being consumed a day? And you're right. It probably won't make a lot of difference. But if all of us did it, then we start to make an impact. And as meeting planners and meeting partners, we have a great influence when people are attending our meetings. And so this post is not only about personal responsibility, but maybe we'll spark an idea in you on how you can spread the message to the meetings and conferences that you attend, that these single-use items need to be eliminated and we need to find better ways and more sustainable ways of attending meetings and managing our meetings. So here's my simple list. Here we go. Idea number one, pack your own water bottle. Most of us do this already, but there's still a lot of work to be done about taking your own water bottle. Facilities now have a lot of more sustainable products like the corn husk cups, and they're super cute, but we're still using the corn husk cup, whereas we can use this a bazillion times over before, unless we lose it, which I think my son has lost this about five times now. Anyway, tip number two, your own travel mug for coffee and tea. And I get that facilities use glass mugs, but folks, those glass mugs are six ounces. I don't know the last time I had a six ounce cup of tea. It was never. So this 12 ounce baby will help me get through the morning. And again, until my son loses this, I can use this as many times as I want. Tip number three, the stainless steel straw. So you're starting to see these pop up a lot. In fact, I got this cute little set from the West in Nova Scotia. Thank you, Megan, for this. It comes with the cleaner and the straw, because paper straws, that crap gets stuck in my teeth. I don't know about your teeth, but I hate it. And so I now put this in my laptop bag and I am good to go. Tip number four, also in my laptop bag, my spork. This is Eddie Bauer edition spork, but you can get sporks anywhere, Mac atmosphere, maybe even Walmart. Who knows? Yes, I use this when there's plastic cutlery put out for us to use. I use my silly looking spork, but I have it with me everywhere. And if I'm eating in my hotel room, something that I may be bought from the grocery store, again, I've always got it on hand. Tip number five, lanyards. Oh, how I hate lanyards, especially lanyards that have a date or a location on them. They are garbage at the end of an event. So meeting planners, if you're going to produce lanyards for your event, please ensure that that's something that you can use for subsequent years of your programming. Alternatively, I pack this very boring, plain black one. So I can use this one instead of a branded lanyard. And I've also started making my own. Now I can't take full credit for this. Sheila Wong started making her own lanyards. They're beautiful by the way, Sheila. I just love them. So I started making a couple for myself and now I no longer have to use a branded lanyard. So yeah, they're the bane of my existence and the name badge people are going to hate this post, but you've got to get rid of the dated lanyards. It's just, it's garbage, plain and simple. Tip number six, bring your own bag. Again, we all have these bags. We've probably got eight or 10 of these bags. Once again, unless your son loses all your bags, there's no reason this shouldn't be in your purse or your laptop bag so that you don't have to use a bag when toting home crap from the conference or crap from the neighborhood grocery store, whatever that is, you've got a bag to use. Tip number seven, yes, your phone. And what I mean by this is the eliminating business cards by taking a picture of the business card using an app like Evernote or an app like Camcard. So let's start taking pictures of business cards and literally returning the business card. I get it. It's one business card. How many business cards do you collect in a year? And now times that by everyone in the industry. Let's start using our apps to take pictures of business cards. Tip number eight, boarding passes. Again, let's go to our phones and use the Apple wallet if you've got an iPhone and download boarding passes and not print them at the airport. I get it. It's one boarding pass, one person, but the hundreds and thousands of people who attend our conferences every year. If they all downloaded their boarding pass, then we wouldn't have all these bits and pieces of paper to go into hotel recycling bins. Simple. And speaking of hotel recycling, tip number nine, pack your own shampoo and conditioner and stop the use of those single use shampoo bottles. Now Marriott recently rolled out that they're going to eliminate all single use shampoo and conditioner bottles by 2020. Really excited to see this. Doesn't make them the innovator. I think Coast Hotels here in Western Canada has been doing it for years. So now we have some hotels that are setting some trends and becoming the innovators and hopefully all hotels will follow suit and get rid of those little tiny bottles. It's incredibly wasteful unless your son needs them for camping and then they come home with me and they go into his camping kit. So this is the audience participation part of the post. I want to hear from you about some of the practices you have in making your meetings or even your own personal travel more sustainable. I hope these sustainability tips have helped. 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