Convention Management Resources Goes National with Green Commitment

March 9, 2011 - PRLog -- HOUSTON – When global convention services provider Convention Management Resources, Inc. (CMR®) of San Francisco, CA decided to launch their Green Campaign over a year ago, the company looked to a local green program to help them realize their sustainability goals.  They were disappointed to learn that the local program wouldn’t recognize many of their efforts because they lease, not own, their office space.  That’s when CMR turned to the Green Business Bureau (GBB) to gain national recognition for their efforts and to achieve green business certification.

“CMR has been on a ‘Green Campaign’ for well over a year now, but has not been able to receive certification from a local program, simply because, as tenants who are leasing, we did not have the authority to upgrade all of the toilets in our high-rise building in downtown San Francisco,” says  Gary Casey, CMR’s Director of Human Resources. “The GBB understands that we have leased in this building for the past 20-years, but because we do not own the building, are not in the capacity to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these upgrades…which was a deal-breaker with the local agency, regardless of the many other initiatives we met.”

Casey says that CMR is pleased to be part of GBB’s nationally-recognized green education and certification program, and he believes that joining a program that offers national recognition will allow the company to more effectively reach out to its employees, clients, vendors and similar organizations to join in minimizing its carbon footprint.

“We feel that being green is not only crucial to our business initiatives, but we understand that as responsible business owners and, quite simply, ‘people’, it is our environmental responsibility to take care of our planet and to share our sustainability endeavors with others to help them grow,” says Casey.

Prior to enrolling with the GBB, CMR had established a Green Team Committee (“GTC”), with an employee representative from most divisions in the organization, including Human Resources, IT, Finance, Leadership and Operations. Casey says the GTC was formed to monitor and assist with improving the environmental performance of CMR’s daily business operations as well as by demonstrating leadership in environmental sustainability while managing major city-wide conventions and expositions. The five major components CMR had identified for improvement are waste reduction, energy conservation, water conservation, pollution prevention, and general staff education.

“This is only the short list,” Casey adds, “as under every major component are many core initiatives to tackle.”

In addition to offering credit for initiatives the company had in place prior to joining, Casey says that CMR appreciates that GBB offers increased recognition as more initiatives are completed.  He also says that CMR has is so pleased with GBB’s user-friendly interface that the company has migrated its green activities entirely to the GBB platform, using it as its corporate Green Dashboard.  

“Working with the local agency, we felt as if we were only a cog in the great wheel, however, with the GBB, we truly feel as if we are partners,” says Casey.  “The GBB wants our organization to succeed in our Green endeavors and thus far have been tremendously responsive.”

Moving forward, Casey says CMR will persevere in its drive to reduce its environmental impact and its daily global fight on climate change.  He adds that the company recognizes is responsibility to educating and increasing the awareness in its employees, clients, vendors and others that “we are all responsible for making this happen.”

“This is not just about our company and receiving recognition,” says Casey.  “It is about each one of us as individuals embracing our responsibility to take care of what we have, our planet. “

For more information on CMR, visit http://www.cmrus.com.

For more information on the GBB, visit http://www.gbb.org.

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CMR is a global service provider of group Housing and Registration solutions for national and international association conventions, corporate meetings, expositions and trade shows.
CMR manages and designs custom software applications and websites for hotel room inventory management, online and on-site event registration, attendee marketing, lead retrieval and data analytics. We are within a niche’ facet of the hospitality and travel industry.