Replacing bottled water with reusable sport bottles filled at water coolers saved an estimated 13,230 containers from possibly winding up in landfills at April’s Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.

There’s nothing like a big tech conference to generate mountains of paper, plastic and trash and Intel’s developer forum in San Francisco is no different. But behind the scenes, the company has been quietly “greening” the event that will draw thousands of hardware developers. Event planners and convention industry experts share stats and best practices for planning big events with an eye on ecology — Intel Geekfest Goes Green.