Green Up Your Trade Show Booth
When you think of events that are eco-friendly, consumer and industrial trade shows probably do not come to mind. At a trade show, hundreds of thousands of pounds of displays, show props, giveaways, and literature are flown, trucked, or driven in at considerable expenses that have a high environmental cost. Attractive, well-lit booths sell products and attract hundreds and thousands of visitors. If you wonder how you can put on an effective show with lower costs all around, this article may help. Let these ideas be a guide to start you in the right direction to your goals of going green.
Selecting a Green Booth
The type of booth you select is a great start in both reducing your shipping costs and maintaining a booth that endorses your green initiatives. Older displays use materials and paints that often don’t comply with green initiatives. Updating your display every few years not only helps your branding and marketing efforts, but also assists in making your exhibiting experience more environmentally friendly by using better and greener materials. Newer displays will have more advanced technologies in many aspects and depending on which type of booth you desire, may weigh significantly less, costing you a much lower fee for shipping or drayage. This could help your “other green initiative.”
When buying a booth, you should ask the manufacturer about how the booth is made, what materials it includes, and what type of finishes complete its look. A supplier committed to green practices will be proud to tell you about how they have designed their products with sustainable materials, implemented lean manufacturing techniques, and finished their products with electrostatic power paint to eliminate waste and the need for cleanup with solvents.
Ways to Make Your Trade Show Exhibit Environmentally Friendly
Great booths look even better when they are lit appropriately. Traditional bulbs waste energy and get so hot they pose a danger to flammable booth materials. LED bulbs illuminate your display with 95% less energy and more efficiency, so they are the best choice for booth lighting if you’re goal is to go greener while not hindering the look of your display.
Even in our digital age, many exhibitors offer product literature that is costly to produce. While the brochures look lovely, many attendees lose their interest in carrying them home by the time they get to the trash bin, which means that the waste factor is compounded. Smart, environmentally-conscious exhibitors (and those that understand how marketing information is best received now) should email their information and brochures to attendees after the show. Ask your attendees if you can scan their badge in the booth so that you can email them their requested information after the show. Most attendees will gladly accept and appreciate the gesture, as it also leaves the work to you instead of to the customer and frees up their baggage.
Giveaways are an important component of trade show culture, but smart companies give away useful items made by green production methods. Cotton T-shirts, woven or recycled bags, and recyclable pens do not cost a fortune, but can impart the double message of who your company is and how conscious you are of using meaningful giveaways.
These are just some ways that you can begin your endeavor of “greening up” your trade show display. For cost and environmental purposes, it always best to explore all of your options to make sure it fits your needs, your message, and your budget.
By: Ken Buckman –
