By Nicole Klein | President and Owner | Exhibit Expressions

As a long-time member of the exhibition industry who has helped my exhibiting clients achieve greater sustainability since 2008, I was asked to write this article for the CEIR blog to explain recent developments that can help exhibition industry members increase sustainability.

Exhibitor’s sustainability practices were briefly covered in a recent CEIR report, 2024 Maximizing Attendee Exhibitor Engagement on the Exhibition Floor, Part 1. The survey showed there is some interest in exhibiting more sustainably, with 33% of exhibitors reporting they made one or more choices to be more sustainable. Certain segments reported even great sustainability, such as 44% of most active exhibitors and 45% of Consumer Goods and Retail Trade exhibitors. Also, the report shared passionate statements from multiple exhibitors that included significant sustainable exhibiting practices.

For exhibit houses and exhibitors who want to do more, there is another recent industry report that provides significant guidance.

How Can Exhibit Houses Help Their Exhibiting Clients Be More Sustainable?

To help answer that important question, three industry groups published in May 2024 the first version of Sustainability Guidance for Exhibition Stand Construction. This is a ground-breaking report that provides detailed guidance for exhibit houses and exhibitors.

The three groups collaborating on these guidelines include:

• EDPA (Experiential Designers + Producers Association)
• ESCA (Exhibition Services & Contractors Association)
• EIC’s (Events Industry Council) Centre for Sustainability & Social Impact

Here is a link to the complete 42-page report: EDPA ESCA EIC Sustainable Exhibition Stand Guidance. I was honored to be one of the 14 people from the EDPA Sustainability Committee who helped create these guidelines.

Make the Sustainability Journey More Accessible

Our goal was to make sustainable exhibiting more accessible, no matter where an organization is on their journey. We also wanted to provide guidance for exhibit houses and agencies to reach for those next steps up from where they are now.

El Sustainability Guidance provides a concise overview of the value and journey towards greater sustainability. Then it provides recommended steps exhibit houses can take to improve sustainability in 11 areas:

• Exhibit Structures
• Flooring
• Furnishing, Staging Materials, Lighting
• Electronic Display, Graphics & Signage
• Packaging
• Waste Management
• Supply Chain
• Logística
• The Human Element
• Energy
• Communications

Within these 11 areas, sustainability steps are prioritized between highly recommended practices and recommended practices, so exhibit houses can first choose steps that will have the greatest positive effect. These recommendations are written for the exhibit house, but also very helpful for exhibitors to also understand areas they can focus on to lower their carbon footprint.

Here’s an example section on Exhibit Structures:

You can move further down the path towards net zero with these guidelines, no matter where you are now. Once you choose a more sustainable alternative for one element, look to the report to find the next thing to do. It’s a laddered approach.

Easy Sustainable Choices You Can Make Now

And as an exhibit house, you can choose equivalent yet more sustainable options for your clients without having to ask them. For example, my company, Exhibit Expressions, recycles our clients’ fabric exhibit graphics. We pay to ship out-of-date graphics to a recycling center. We consider it part of our operating costs, and do not charge our clients.

Similarly, we have clients who want graphics printed on foamcore (made from polyvinyl chloride) for their exhibit. After two or three uses, their graphics are no longer presentable, so they go to the landfill, where they will last virtually forever. For a more sustainable yet equivalent alternative, we instead print on an equivalent lightweight, rigid board that looks and acts the same, but can either be recycled or will break down much faster when landfilled.

These are just two of many choices we make to help our clients be more sustainable. In most cases, these choices no longer cost more than non-sustainable alternatives.

Other choices include:

Up to 100% recycled and 100% recyclable:

• Shipping Cases: 100% recycled and 100% recyclable
• Fabric Graphics: 60% to 100% recycled and 100% recyclable
• Aluminum Exhibit Extrusions: Up to 70% recycled and 100% recyclable
• Recycled Acrylic for Graphics: 100% recycled and 100% recyclable
• Graphics Substrate: 100% recycled and 100% recyclable

More sustainable exhibit components:

• LED Lighting: Uses about 70% less energy and lasts many times longer than halogen lights
• Bamboo Plywood: Made from 100% fast-growing bamboo with emission free adhesives
• FSC-Certified Wood Crates: Lined with recycled fabric and including reusable packaging

These are choices we have made on our journey towards providing our exhibiting clients greater sustainability. Exhibit houses like us can look to the Sustainability Guidance for further steps we can take next.

6 Reasons Exhibiting Companies Want to Be More Sustainable

Some exhibit houses may be less motivated to expand sustainable exhibiting choices for their exhibiting clients because they are not explicitly asked to by their corporate marketing clients.

Yet, these same corporations often have sustainability goals for their overall company, announced via an ESG or CSR program. They may have even embraced – and promoted – sustainability in their own product offerings. They just haven’t asked their exhibit marketers to be more sustainable.

Exhibit houses can find incentive knowing their corporate clients are increasingly motivated to adopt sustainable practices for a variety of reasons:

1. Enhanced brand value and loyalty with consumers, B2B buyers, and investors
2. Mitigating risk of disruption from the increasingly visible existing climate crisis
3. Meeting stricter environmental regulations worldwide coming into force
4. Cost savings and waste reduction that improve financial standing
5. Leadership commitments motivated by personal beliefs
6. Increased market share with sustainability-driven buyers

So, when an exhibit house provides more sustainable choices for their exhibiting clients, there is value exhibit managers can promote about those choices to their corporate management.

I hope that, having read this article, you will click through and review the EDPA ESCA EIC Sustainable Exhibition Stand Guidance. Even more, I hope that as an exhibit house or exhibitor, you will identify viable next steps you can take on your company’s sustainability journey.

Sobre el Autor

Nicole Klein is the President and Owner of Exhibit Expressions, a trade show exhibit provider in Atlanta and Denver. Since joining the trade show industry in 1992, she has enjoyed helping event managers and B2B leaders craft elegant trade show experiences that captivate audiences and convert leads.