Sustainability Officers: What Do You Know About Exhibitions

Sustainability officers transcend numerous departments within a business, often focusing on facilities, sourcing, production and fair pay. However, an area that is often not on a sustainability team's radar is Marketing and Events, or more specifically trade shows and exhibitions.

Each year, the UK events industry produces around 100,000 tonnes of waste for landfill. The events industry has a sustainability problem that only the most environmentally aware companies have faced up to.  On the ground, in exhibition halls across Europe, stark eco hypocrisy is as much on display as the products and services. Businesses claim sustainability under a banner that is literally unsustainable. 

Sustainability may have once been an added benefit for businesses but it’s now an expectation.  Sustainability Officers have a duty to ensure their organisation complies with environmental regulations and standards but beyond this, they must ensure their brand is protected against environmental complaints.  When activating a brand at a trade show it's imperative that sustainability teams consciously intervene to ensure the sustainability credentials enforced at other levels of the business extend to the Marketing and Sales teams organising a trade show.

Fortunately, sustainable solutions to exhibiting do exist...

What are Trade Shows?

Trade shows, business events, conferences and exhibitions serve as a valuable platform for businesses to showcase products and services to prospective clients, gain brand awareness and meet like-minded professionals in the industry.

Trade Shows: The Sustainability Problem

Though business shows offer fantastic opportunities, they are renowned for their extreme levels of waste, largely from traditional, custom-build stands. Referred to by Americans as “build “n” burn”, these stands use shocking quantities of valuable resources, like timber, acrylic and MDF, that are thrown into landfills after two to three days.

In the UK alone, over 1000 exhibitions take place every single year, and each hosts around 100 to 500 exhibitors. That’s a lot of wasted materials.

Why Sustainability Pledges Often Miss Trade Shows

• Awareness: Truthfully, many businesses are unaware of the sustainable alternatives to custom-builds, like Modular Stands.
• Fear of Change: Aside from awareness, stakes are high at business shows, and with competitors using custom-builds, many businesses fear the change and settle with the unsustainable solution.
• Greenwashing: Greenwashing has been a significant problem among exhibition contractors. Many claim to provide “beautiful, sustainable displays” using recyclable materials as justification. Unfortunately, many of these materials are never recycled because it’s just too difficult to do so. On break-down day, at the end of the exhibition, the show halls are crammed, and contractors opt for the easiest and cheapest disposal; landfill. Of course, some make it to recycling, but when we’re talking about a potential of 50,000 stands per year, the sheer number of materials, and brief use, cannot be coined “sustainable”, especially when there are reusable models on the market.
• The stand Organisers: The responsibility of managing the exhibition stand usually falls on marketing teams and agencies. These decision-makers primarily work in digital formats where sustainability is often not a priority and therefore is not on the radar.

The solution: Modular Exhibition Stands

Modular exhibition stands are a reusable, reconfigurable and truly sustainable exhibiting model. Modular stands consist of multiple parts. Often, they use a framework that locks together to create the stand structure, with graphic panels overlayed. These graphic panels serve as a blank canvas for a brand's typography, marketing messages, logos, images and banding. Since the stands are reusable, they are the most sustainable exhibiting solution on the market. The modularity of the stands allows them to be reconfigured to different stand spaces or sizes, so stands look and feel new for each event.

Custom-Modular Stands

The most impactful type of modular stand solution is “custom-modular”. These stands bridge the gap between custom and modular stands - they are custom-designed, yet entirely reusable. Custom-modular stands take all the benefits of modular and custom; complete design freedom, bespoke features, reusability and reconfigurability, without any of the waste.

The company pioneering and revolutionising custom-modular is Quadrant2Design, a UK-based exhibition stand designer and builder, working worldwide. Stands utilise an aluminium framework, enveloped by seamless, panoramic graphic panels, offering both sustainability and high-impact design capabilities. Quadrant2Design exhibition stands can host bespoke, customisable features, interactive elements and integrated product displays among a range of other eye-catching options.

Taking sustainability a step further, Quadrant2Design offers a Free-Hire Plan, where exhibitors can invest in their graphic panels, and hire the hardware and structure of the stand free of charge. This plan ensures the most is made out of valuable aluminium and hardware. As Quadrant2Design is a full-solution provider, this plan comes with Project Management, design, pre-build, logistics handling, installation, dismantling and free storage!

Conclusion

Sustainability officers should take a proactive role in ensuring that their company’s exhibition strategies and brand activation align with broader sustainability goals. Modular and custom-modular exhibition stands offer practical solutions to reduce waste without sacrificing brand presence. By promoting awareness and encouraging a shift away from "build 'n' burn" stands, sustainability officers can help businesses minimise their environmental impact, even at large-scale events like trade shows.