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EPA's "Greening" of National Brownfields Conference in Boston Yields Major Recycling, Waste Reduction Effort

Release Date: 11/15/2006
Contact Information: David Deegan (617)918-1017

(Boston, Mass. – Nov. 15, 2006) – As people across the country celebrate “America Recycles Day” today, EPA is proud of it’s efforts to apply “green” principles to a national conference being held in Boston this week, attended by more than 6,000 people.

EPA’s New England regional office has been integrally involved in planning logistics for a national conference occurring this week in Boston. As part of our mission to protect America’s environment, EPA has also applied green principles to the planning and operation of this conference.

The conference, “Brownfields 2006,” is a national forum for professionals involved in redevelopment of properties across the country which are stigmatized, contaminated and/or abandoned. By focusing on redevelopment of blighted properties, we are able to put properties back into productive use for communities and help keep undeveloped lands in a natural state.

Brownfields 2006 will be the greenest conference in the 11-year history of the event. Many of the changes have been noticeable to attendees, while other efforts are more “behind the scenes.”

Specifically, some of the techniques applied to Brownfields 2006 that are helping to promote recycling and reduce waste generation include:
- Promoting electronic registration to reduce paper usage
- Using an improved merge/purge system at our mail house to reduce duplicate mailings
- Increasing the use of post-consumer recycled paper in all conference materials
- Recycling bottles, cans, paper, and more from the kitchen, conference center, and session rooms at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
- Composting food waste from conference center facilities.

In our efforts to green the Brownfields 2006 conference, EPA has not limited our focus to recycling and reducing solid waste generation. Some of the other ways EPA has promoted a green conference include:
- Encouraging attendees to use Boston’s extensive public transit system or hybrid taxi service
- Offering conference hotels with environmentally-friendly operations
- Requiring buses used for the conference to comply with Massachusetts’s anti-idling regulations
- Offering educational sessions and a special workshop focused on green building
- Encouraging exhibitors to “green” their booths

EPA’s commitment to a green conference, featuring hundreds of seminars and thousands of participants from across the country is a strong example of our ability to “walk the talk.” While EPA is always committed to protecting human health and the environment, we also make many efforts to apply environmental principles to our daily actions.

More information:

EPA’s greening of Brownfields 2006 (http://epa.gov/ne/brownfields/bf2006.htm#greening)

How you can help on America Recylces Day (http://www.americarecyclesday.org/Recycling_101/recycling_101.html)