Cobo Center has improved their sustainability efforts in the past few years and today, they report that they'll host the flagship Sustainable Brands® conference in 2017.

Some of their green initiatives in the past few years include kitchen and food court composting, minimal daytime lighting due to the three-story glass atrium, increased recycling bins, induction lighting in exhibit halls that uses 40% less electricity, and a living green roof.

In 2015, Cobo achieved the Green Meetings Industry Council’s APEX/ASTM standard certification, and was the ninth convention center to do so.

"Sustainable Brands has been committed to reducing and managing the environmental impact of our flagship conference for years now and we are excited to be bringing our community to Cobo Center in May 2017," said David Fiss, Executive Producer of Live Events at Sustainable Brands. "In 2013, we were the first event organizer in North America to achieve conformity to the ISO 20121 Standard requiring event organizers to identify and understand the effects that their activities have on the environment, society, and the economy."

To eliminate paper use, in 2014 Cobo Center added giant exterior digital signs and 100 meeting room message boards to their technology offering.

“We believe it's important for a facility, that generates such a great amount of waste, to do something to offset its carbon footprint,” said Claude Molinari, general manager of Cobo Center. “This came to the forefront of our operation as something to differentiate Cobo from our main competition in trying to procure events. Green event support at Cobo is provided at no charge to the customer.”