Hilton Worldwide has launched a program to help meeting professionals reduce waste and incorporate sustainability into meetings and events.
Meet with Purpose also align with many customers’ corporate responsibility goals, Hilton says.
Inspired by Hilton’s corporate responsibility strategy, Travel with Purpose, Hilton gathered feedback from customers and sales team members to identify the most pressing sustainability issues for meetings and events. To meet these needs, Meet with Purpose focuses on two key areas:
- Mindful Eating encourages meeting professionals to minimize food waste and encourage healthy choices. This includes sourcing locally and establishing central water stations with reusable containers.
- Mindful Meeting encourages meeting professionals to host more sustainable events by using practices that are less resource-intensive. These range from using paperless registration and placing notepads in a central location to turning off climate control when a meeting room isn’t in use.
Meet with Purpose can reduce events’ environmental footprints, Hilton says. As examples:
- Last September, Hilton San Francisco Union Square hosted an event that typically draws about 60,000 attendees. Hilton’s team helped the company recycle 66,858 pounds of waste material, source approximately 30 percent of energy from renewable sources and contribute more than 1.3 tons of food donations.
- Additionally, Hilton Chicago has a recycling and composting program, efficient water systems and partners with local farms to source food locally in addition to growing its own vegetables on a rooftop garden. The hotel works with customers to incorporate these practices into meetings and events hosted at the hotel.
Hilton has reduced its own carbon output by 20.2 percent, energy use by 13.6 percent, waste by 26.8 percent and water use by 13.1 percent since 2009, according to its most recent sustainability report.
