If your team is not selling sustainability because nobody is quite sure what it means, that is the problem this program exists to fix. Robert McLaughlin and the Explore Fresh team will train your people in person, free of charge.
One company being sustainable does not make a sustainable event city. Hundreds of planners, venues, hotels, caterers, and suppliers who can explain it and deliver it do. Training is how we get there, so we do not charge for it. There is no sales pitch and no obligation.
Robert McLaughlin has spent four decades in and around this work: with growers in the Andes and on rose farms in Ecuador and Colombia, as CEO of Organic Bouquet and Organic Style magazine, as a founding member of Veriflora, North America's first sustainability certification for flowers, and as Chief Sustainability Officer of Goodwill Industries of Central Florida. Today he leads Florida Fresh and Sense of Source. He teaches sustainability the way he learned it: from the source, in plain language.
His work has been featured on Bloomberg Television, Fox News and ABC's The View, and in the Orlando Business Journal. Read his story.
Robert McLaughlin, founder, Explore Fresh and Florida Fresh
Each session is built for the team in the room. Sales teams learn how to talk about it with clients. Design and operations teams learn how to do it. Leadership learns how to measure it.
Clear definitions, what counts and what does not, and how to spot greenwashing, including your own.
Answering client questions without overpromising, and framing sustainable choices as value rather than compromise.
The four areas where event teams can make the biggest difference, and simple first steps in each.
What to track, how to baseline, and how to publish honest numbers clients can trust.
Formats: a 60 to 90 minute session at your location, a half-day workshop, or a visit to our Orlando studios and greenhouse.
Every session is built around real stories from four decades at the source. Here are a few your team might hear. The endings are saved for the room.
The vegetable farm had everything a buyer looks for: the organic certificate, the paperwork, the right answers. It also had a secret that no certificate would ever show. Robert tells what he found when he went to see it for himself, and why a label is where your questions should start, not where they end.
It isn't Thanksgiving, and it isn't Christmas, at least not directly. The answer starts on a rose farm high in the Andes, months before Valentine's Day, with a decision growers make in the fall. Once your team understands it, they'll never quote red the same way again.
A rose cut in Ecuador and a head of lettuce picked in California both have a long trip ahead of them: coolers, trucks, planes, warehouses and wholesalers. Robert walks the chain day by day, and shows what your team can ask to get fresher product with a smaller footprint.
Sell and specify sustainable choices.
Set standards and answer client questions.
Source, reuse, and reduce waste.
Design for reuse from the start.
We will reply with available dates and a short conversation to tailor the session. No cost, no obligation.
Robert also speaks at industry conferences and corporate events on sustainability, supply chains, and building a more responsible event industry. Use the same form and note that you are asking about a speaking engagement.
SUSTAINABLE EVENTS. CHOICES THAT MATTER.