The Cost of Green Event Themes

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Permalink Reply by Suzanne M. Smith on February 24, 2009 at 6:34pm

In the floral decor world, I have seen a great surge in available organics and Sustainable products, and not a real increase in overall costs. I see the media always seems to asume that Organic/ green means expensive. This is a bit outdated.
The cost of flowers, organic or non has been driven more by transportation fuel costs , and buying closer to home can save on that aspect as well.
since groups like Veriflora and Rain Forest Alliance have stepped up with viable information and representatives to show farms and growers in all parts of the world that they can be earth and human friendly. we have more options and education on who to buy from. They are strict about the certification process.
Many decor companies now have a whole section of recycled or sustainable materials , and if you ask will be happy to help you locate unique items made from recycled paper, old tires, bamboo, ground glass bottles and cork that are gorgeous.

Being creative with advance footwork in searching out the best of the items does take time. But once you have your vendor supplier list you can call them again for each event, so costs balance out.

I had about a 40% call ratio for Eco friendly/organic last year, but have seen a major increase in requests for 09-2010 events. People want to party with a concious, and we do our best to help them go green. Like many of our clients we are always learning.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Chee on February 24, 2009 at 11:37pm

The idea of green costing more is big turn off. I decided that for my business I was not going to charge more, rather, I'd be a market rate. One big thing that I have going for me is the fact that I do save money in my utility costs because my building is much more energy efficient than in the past.

When people try to charge me more for green, I always say no thanks, and the I seem to always find a way to get that something done for the same or lower cost as non-green. For instance the white boards that we have are FSC certified wrapped in bamboo. A contractor tried to charge me more because it is green, I ended up finding a much cheaper solution by going to Home Depot and buying the materials myself and then have my carpenter build them for me. In the end I got a nicer looking product and a cheaper price!

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Permalink Reply by Mireya Navarro on February 25, 2009 at 8:23am

When planning green weddings, couples find that some things, like organic food, are more expensive. You may pay a mark-up of 10 to 30 percent for some products and even more for food. Organic food is very labor intensive -- (more labor is required to manage pests without conventional pesticides, for instance.) Also, conventional farming enjoys government subsidies that help keep prices low by comparison. But many other products are competitively priced, including recycled paper invitations, compostable tableware and Veriflora-certified flowers. Prices should come down as suppliers step up to meet the growing demand and more competition ensues.

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Permalink Reply by Dwayne Thomas on February 25, 2009 at 1:10pm

This is a gigantic topic, and brevity is not my thing, sorry in advance....

We have been asked by several clients to produce "all green" lighting solutions for their events. While we could argue all day (and probably will for years to come) about what the definition of an "all green" lighting solution is, we take it to mean that it comes from a lighting provider that faithfully practices sustainable operating procedures (biodiesel in trucks, buying wind power for your buildings, recycling as much as possible, reusing expendables until they are shredded, using biodegradable cleaning products, 100% recycled paper goods, two-sided printing, etc etc). Additionally, however, we believe it to mean that the lighting provider has a robust and viable product offering that features a wide range of low-energy lighting alternatives. This, at the moment, means lots of LED, HID, high-efficiency MSR, and even the occasional CFL light sources.

So, we did an interesting bit of comparative research after The North Face, a manufacturer of outdoor apparel, asked us to produce an all green lighting rig for one of their biannual meetings. They first wanted to compare prices to traditional lighting, which we did. We found that, after designing two solutions that were as functionally identical as we could make them, the traditional solution price was about 20% less, from a combined rental and labor standpoint. Of course, it also required a 100a three-phase electrical service, compared to just (2) 20amp outlets for the low-energy plan. Also, it would have taken up about 30% more truck space and weighed substantially more.

One unexpected advantage of the low-energy plan was that the client (who ultimately chose this plan) got complete color changing capability from over half the fixtures in the system, as opposed to having to chose a single gel color otherwise. If we had proposed a traditional system that offered as much color versatility as the low energy system ultimately did, it would have cost at least as much as the low energy system cost!

So overall, it's most likely still more expensive to use a LED/HID (low-energy) system, but the extent of this extra expense depends greatly on the skills and creativity of the person designing it, and the expected utility of the lighting proposed.

There is also great trade-back in the fact that many venues charge for electrical service, and an end user could easily save 1000 dollars or more switching to a lower wattage solution, which should cover much of the added expense of the equipment.

Here are the other places you'll find savings if you "go green" with your lighting: Fixtures that do more (as many high-efficiency fixtures do) mean that, overall, you'll hang fewer fixtures, saving labor and trucking needs. Lastly, the weight of the truck pack is going to go down significantly in most instances, since most of the new range of low-energy fixtures do not use external dimming equipment. This also, of course, means that you won't be renting any dimmer packs!

From the standpoint of my business, as a lighting rental and production provider, the green event community should know this: LED and HID gear is very expensive for us to purchase, right around 4-8 times the cost of an equivalent traditional fixture. It's a BIG investment! The prices on LED technology HAD been falling rapidly up until about a year ago, but have ceased to do so, at least for quality equipment. "Cheaper" LED gear (read: comparatively less expensive than high-end LED gear, but still costlier than a traditional fixture) is EVERYWHERE, but it is generally of such poor quality that I fear it will put a bad taste in many user's mouths for the concept of low-energy lighting, since not only is it often faulty, but the light quality is usually pretty bad as well.

Right now we're seeing the better LED product manufacturers refocusing their R&D efforts so that they aren't so much designing fixtures that cost less, but instead they are designing fixtures that do more; more brightness, better color mixing, longer throw, better optical quality. And, we are seeing the first results of a couple of exciting new light source technologies that will probably give LED a run for the money in terms of sustainability quotient. More on these in a later post, perhaps.

Bottom line: Hiring full production "green lighting" should only cost 5-25% more, since the higher rental costs are going to be somewhat offset by savings in power, trucking, cable, labor, and dimming equipment. However, if you are renting a handful of LED wash lights just to, say, uplight a ballroom perimeter yourself, plan on spending substantially more than a traditional solution would have cost, as the equipment itself is simply more expensive for your rental provider to own.

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Permalink Reply by Karin Bigelow on February 26, 2009 at 3:09pm

These responses are great, touching many subjects and reflecting your individual imaginations. Yes, when an item costs more initially to produce, that expense is passed on. Peter had the originality and tenacity to go around a stumbling block and still benefitted his contractor. Suzanne noted Veriflora and Rain Forest Alliance stepping up with viable information, recognizing that knowledge is always a stepping stone of the early adapters (Dwayne might remember when laptops cost $2000 for a single color display. OOOH, red LCD's!) As Mireva pointed out, prices will come down with growing demand. And a few tax breaks for research will help, too!

Undoubtedly, we are in a green space of a place that is populated by innovators and early adapters.

An estimated 10-20% of American society are naturally curious, self-motivated, "early adapters." We can expect resistance. Others will catch up. And we will be working on the next step. As A. Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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