Making Your Custom Exhibition Stand Experience Eco Friendly
07 March 2017, Posted by Exhibition Stands on Exhibition Stands

Tradeshows often become a focal point of the business calendar. It can require months of planning and preparation to make just a couple of days a success. One thing that hasn’t ever changed, however, is the waste that presenting at a tradeshow produces. For many businesses, months are spent on the creation of a custom exhibition stand, which puts them head and shoulders above the competition and is visible from every corner of the event.

What tradeshow attendees don’t see is the massive clean up that occurs after the event has finished. Those exhibition stands, which once took pride of place as people ebbed and flowed around them, are regularly abandoned as trash and left in broken pieces to be thrown out with the rubbish. The purchase of a stand can easily set a business back a hefty four-figure sum, so the impact both economically and on the environment is remarkable.

How are tradeshows wasteful?

On the whole, these events can be pretty wasteful. From the construction of custom exhibition stands to the power and fuel required to get thousands of people under one roof, there is a lot of wastage and unnecessary expense going on. Let’s start by considering the cost of simply attending a tradeshow, which is pretty minimal if it’s local but what if it’s overseas? You’ll have to pay for flights, accommodation and so on before even stepping through the door.

Then comes the issue of travelling with your stand. Regardless of whether the tradeshow is local or international, the overall size of some stands call for them to be transported separately and sometimes even requires more labour to set it up once it arrives. Because the nature of tradeshows tend to differ between venues, you’ll often find yourself with a 3x3m booth at one event and a 5x2m booth at the next – this makes reusing the stand difficult.

How to make the stand more eco-friendly?

The first step to making your exhibition stand experience more eco-friendly is simple – design one that can be reused at multiple events. The best way to achieve this is by investing in individual pieces, such as a pull up banner and a counter, as this will allow you to reconfigure them according to the size of your booth. Got a smaller space this time around? Leave the second banner at the office or forget about using the counter.

Secondly, you could consider how the stand could be used outside of the tradeshow environment. If you very rarely present at events, simply packing up the stand and putting it in storage can seem like a real waste (plus, a lack of space is why businesses often dispose of their stands once the event has finished). Have you considered using the brochure display in your reception area or renting some space in a local shopping centre for the banner?

Whether you want to do your bit for the environment or you just can’t stand the wastage any longer, we hope that the tips provided here have given you a better idea of how to make your custom exhibition stand more eco-friendly. At the end of the day, ensuring that you can re-use the stand instead of throwing it out is the best option. Get in touch with Displays Direct today to learn more about designing displays that can be re-used over and over again.