Recently I met up with Liliana Segal, the founder of Green Chair Events. She is extremely passionate about the environment and she gave me some insight about her company.
After working as an event planner with other companies for over 18 years, Liliana realized the large amount of waste that was produced from events and wanted to do something about it. Since she was working for other people, she had no power to change what they were doing, so she decided to start her own company, Green Chair Events.
They’ve been running for over a year now, and their mission is to educate people on green alternatives when running an event. They want to inform people that a green event can be elegant as any other event, but most people just don’t have the knowledge and resources to know how to pull it off.
So what makes Green Chair Events eco-friendly? They follow the basic rules of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
- They minimize what they buy and only buy things that are high quality so they can reuse them for many years. They also create artful pieces from basic recyclable materials, such as a boat steering wheel from old wooden table legs.
- They make sure everything is handled in an environmentally responsible way. Left over food is donated to community kitchens. Leftover flowers are donated to seniors homes and the Flowers For Food Society, a program where leftover flowers are given to homeless people to sell in exchange for monetary donations.
- They also provide a carbon footprint report and make comparisons of how big a carbon footprint is when doing a green event vs. a not green event.
- They created the “Green Dream Foundation” that helps non-profits put on a sustainable event. They teach volunteers to run an event sustainably, they provide special discounts for non-profits and let them borrow decorations for free. They also send their green team over at the end of the events to divert the leftovers responsibly.
So what sets them apart from other green event planners?
Not only are they green, they want to teach people how they can be green. They have an education system in place so people are aware of the possibilities available to them. Their Green Team goes to every event to educate people; they bring the proper bins so waste can be handled responsibly and stand by the bins so no contamination occurs between recyclables. Their ultimate goal is that all events in Vancouver are green events. They are not concerned about their competition, as Liliana’s ultimate goal is to have green events be the norm so we can reduce the impact of events on the environment. You cannot have a green event without a team, facility, and a plan in place and Green Chair Events makes this possible.
For more information about Green Chair Events, check out their website at http://www.greenchairevents.com/
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