McAfee recently held an 1,800-person sales event in Las Vegas. The company implemented "green strategies" at the meeting. I'm not sure what that means, however, the company said that ICF International conducted "a scientific measurement" of the environmental impact and carbon footprint of McAfee's event. McAfee's effort reportedly reduced CO2 emissions in the following ways:

* 25 metric tons saved by facilitating the sharing of rooms by participants

* 3.2 metric tons and 56,357 gallons of water saved through participation in the hotel's towel and sheet reuse program

* 0.5 metric tons saved by providing a shuttle for airport and event transfers rather than travel by individual taxicabs

* 0.5 metric tons saved by eliminating bottled water and providing tap water only

Not too shabby. Then after the event all 1,800 attendees undoubtedly hopped on jets to fly back to their home town, where they then hopped in cars, cabs, buses, and subways to get to their houses. There's no other way, yet.

"Our commitment to sustainability means ensuring that we leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in a healthy and clean state," said Dave DeWalt, McAfee's chief executive officer and president. "To live up to that goal, we're looking throughout our business operations, including corporate events such as this one, for innovative ways to reduce or eliminate our environmental impact. Our employees, customers, partners and others have spoken enthusiastically in support of green commitments, and we are actively working together to make this commitment a reality."

If I were in Mr. DeWalt's shoes, the next time I got that many people together, I'd buy every one of them a copy of the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?," and ask them to watch it carefully. And I'd ask them to each buy a copy for at least 10 people - or at least suggest that people rent it at Netflix. Here's a summary:

"Amid ever-increasing gas prices, this documentary delves into the short life of the GM EV1 electric car -- once all the rage in the mid-1990s and now fallen by the roadside. How could such an efficient, green-friendly vehicle fail to transform our garages and skies? Through interviews with government officials, former GM employees and concerned celebs (such as EV1 driver Mel Gibson), Chris Paine (former EV1 owner) seeks to answer the question."

Reader Comments

Thank you for writing about McAfee's recent effort to "green" our corporate event in Las Vegas! I wanted to clarify a couple items. -- by "green strategies," we mean various actions we took to minimize the footprint of this event, including limiting printed handouts, donating unused food to local farms, conducting registration electronically, using badges and lanyards made of recycled materials, using paper made from recycled content, avoiding plastic disposable utensils/packaging, using corn-based compostable cups for beverages, etc. We tried a number of ways to green our event in this inaugural effort. -- good point about participants getting back on airplanes to travel back home. in our press release (http://www.mcafee.com/us/about/press/corporate/2008/20080403_181010_e.html), we do report the full carbon footprint of our event, which includes all the travel by airplane and other vehicles. as you'll see, the air travel in fact was 90% of the carbon footprint. since we could not eliminate this air travel, instead we purchased carbon offsets through CarbonFund.org to offset our full carbon footprint. Our offsets are supporting a reforestation project in Louisiana. Ideally, the strategy is to minimize as much as you can and then offset the balance. We certainly tried to follow this approach with our event. Thank you again for writing about our efforts. We certainly welcome any and all feedback and comments either on blogs or sent to us at responsibility [ a t ] mcafee.com. Sincerely, Douglas Sabo Director, Worldwide Corporate Responsibility McAfee, Inc.

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