Going Green in Your Presentations

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be presenting a three-hour training for fifty members of a regional association.

Little will they know that I have, as usual, thought long and hard about ways to use fewer natural resources so I can give a presentation that is kinder to the environment.

For one thing, I’m not going to give attendees a printed handout.  In the interest of saving trees, I will, instead, give the members of my audience the option of adding their name and email address to a list allowing me to e-mail  them a pdf of my handout.  If the folks who hired me had required I bring a printed handout, I would have insisted it be printed double-sided, on recycled paper, and done my darndest to keep the number of pages to a bare minimum.

Tomorrow, I’m even opting out of using a power point slide presentation. This will not only save a little electricity, but will keep the audience’s attention squarely where it belongs—on me, and what I’m saying!

On a related note, while I may not have much of a say about my client’s catering choices, I can at least opt out of plastic bottled water by bringing my own drinking container — When faced with a table filled with Styrofoam cups, plastic packages of creamer, plastic stir sticks, packets of sweeteners and individually wrapped Danish, it comforts me to know that I’ve done at least one tiny thing to help staunch the flow of plastic and paper packaging that’s choking our planet.   And if there isn’t a recycling container present at my speaking gig, I happily take plastic and Styrofoam products home in my Prius, where they’ll go out with Monday’s recycling.

If you have any more ideas of how I can make my presentations even greener, I’d love to hear from you at eleni@s-p-e-e-k.com.  We really can make a difference, one handout at a time.

SOURCE: http://abecssbr.com/ann-arbor/ann-arbor-2011/guest-columns-ann-arbor-201...