Regular readers of The Conference People blog, and indeed those who know how we work, will realise that Sustainability and the Environment in general are very close to the hearts of our venue finding and event management teams.

We're thrilled when we take venue finding enquiries from clients that have "Sustainability" high on on their agenda, however, Uk hotels and conference centres are making it hard to find the ideal venue for our clients.

We find it extraordinary that Conference venues and hotels cannot assist towards creating green events. We appreciate the predicaments faced by venues (cost and location mainly), but in our experience venues are just not trying hard enough.

To give you two examples, one venue in the midlands last week told us they were refusing to bring in fair trade coffee for a client because "we don't supply it". Needless to say they lost the business. Another venue in the North West asked us "What is Fair Trade?".

As ever The Conference People are not going to sit idly whilst venues take years to catch up with the demands of our clients. Our Venue Finding Manager, Alex Graham, has devised a list of 8 simple questions pertaining to the sustainability of conference venues, which will be sent to all UK hotels and conference centres on behalf of The Conference People. Based on these results we will be deciding which venues can be determind "environmentally friendly" and which don't give two hoots. I'll let you know the results!

We hope more venues will take the lead from the fantastic folk at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London http://www.cavendishconference.com/. They are the only London based conference venue that we know of that is going through the GreenMark Accrediation Process http://www.green-mark.co.uk/, which enables them to offer the option of carbon offsetting to clients. Brilliant!

We'd love to hear from venues that feel they are making a difference. Please get in touch with me and I'll make a point of mentioning you in my blog.

C'mon UK venues, it's time to wake up to this global problem and realise that you can play a part, and believe me when I say, the enquiries are there for the taking. People want Carbon Neutral, Sustainable conferences, and the want them now!