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Huge Georgia meeting venue turns green
The giant Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta has taken some major steps to bring on the green.
“This is quite a feat with a complex as large as the GWCC—the center features a 3.09 million-square-foot convention center, the 71,250-seat Georgia Dome and a 21-acre Centennial Olympic Park—offering a plethora of meeting options, but making greening appear a challenge,” says Smart Meetings.
Microsoft hosted two events at the center in 2011, its Convergence and Tech Ed programs, and McDonald’s also hosted its internal meeting on the premises.
“Through basic, yet conscientious methods, the GWCC was able to divert an astonishing amount of waste and produce diversion rates that are frankly baffling,” said Smart Meetings.
Microsoft’s first event, Microsoft Convergence, hosted 9,100 attendees and by event’s end had diverted 30.3 tons of waste from landfills though recycling, composting and donating unused food.
A second Microsoft event, Tech Ed, was attended by 10,250 people, and resulted in 30.8 tons of single-stream recycling (paper, bottles, cans and plastics), 4.4 tons of recyclable cardboard, 32.35 tons of composted food and 1.48 tons of donated food and supplies.
The McDonald’s event only had 7,000 attendees but employed the same types of deliberate strategic programs that made the Microsoft events such a success.
The GWCC was able to assist McDonald’s in diverting 29.9 tons of waste from landfills— including 18 tons of composted food, 5.5 tons of cardboard and five tons of single-stream recycling.
“The amounts of waste the GWCC has successfully diverted shows that greening is possible on any level. Sustainability doesn’t have to mean cutting back, and keeping your event eco can be as easy as finding a local organization to which you can donate your extra items,” the site says.
By David Wilkening
David
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