Going for the Green

Sustainable services are coming, but will anybody take advantage of them?

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 1/10/2005

Anyone with a social conscience isn't in the tradeshow business long before noticing the large amount of waste it produces. Even if it lags behind other parts of the world by a decade or more, the U.S. exhibition industry is finally getting some sustainable options. The question now is: Will anybody use them?

"Next to construction home building, we're the second most wasteful industry," said Georgia Malki, president of Green Event Management Solutions, at December's annual gathering of the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management in San Antonio.

Malki and GEMS Vice President Alan Van de Kamp manned a booth at IAEM's Expo! Expo! and reported that interest in their services was high, particularly by facilities.

GEMS' roots go back 15 years, to private management company 7 Star Events. One of 7 Star's clients was Whole Life Expos, and starting with them — as well as a personal passion for environmentalism — the company segued into the niche market of sustainable event management.

The consultancy promises to connect just about anybody who's interested — show managers, general contractors, venues — with the means needed to reuse and conserve as many of the resources that go into producing trade-shows as possible.

MP Associates Co-president Lee Wood, a show manager of 15 years who runs the Design Automation Conference series, was one of the people who visited GEMS' booth at Expo! Expo! because he'd like to reduce the refuse produced at his own events.

"When you walk through a showfloor during teardown and you see the amount of waste, it's phenomenal," Wood said. "Everything from the carpet, to the Visqueen, to the plastic utensils and plates, to the 12-ounce cans and plastic bottles everybody's drinking out of — it all goes out to the trash by the gross."

It's tough to quantify how much gets thrown out of a tradeshow, but everybody agrees it's too much. According to Wood's most recent estimate, for instance, 40 percent of the 200,000 square feet of carpet laid at DAC was thrown into the garbage after the show, because it had to be cut to accommodate cables running into meeting rooms on the showfloor.

Richard Maples, vice president of sales for Shepard Exposition Services, believes carpeting poses the biggest challenge to the industry's environmental efforts. "The process in the production of fibers, especially those with a plastics base, and the dying of the goods is proclaimed very harmful to the environment by the green community," said Maples, who heads the general contractor's green meetings initiative. "After the fact, there is currently no carpet recycling program in place, and the majority of the carpet is sent to landfills."

As evidence that Americans are far behind some of their international counterparts, Wood pointed to German exhibition organizers who, since the 1990s, have had industry standards requiring them to recycle a majority of the carpet they use at trade fairs.

Of course, he noted, German organizers charge fees to exhibitors for anything the companies leave in their booths after a show. In Wood's view, the stacks of products and literature left behind offer a good place to start in taking on waste reduction.

The crux of the problem, Malki believes, is the supply chain. For the last three decades, decorators have been using the same vendors, whose pipelines and warehouses are full of harmful materials. In the case of carpeting, for instance, "decorators have no choice but to use petroleum-based products that don't break down," she said.

Despite the gloomy picture, there is hope. For starters, there are existing role models. On the facility side, San Francisco's Moscone Center for years has consistently been among the top winners in California's waste reduction award program(. Newer venues, like Pittsburgh's David L. Lawrence Convention Center, are being designed to lessen their impact on the environment, following criteria developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

On the organizer side, the Convention Industry Council this spring drafted guidelines for green meeting management. Both Malki and Wood lauded Penton's New Hope Natural Media as a leader in the field for its environmentally conscious production of Natural Products Expo.

And GEMS' own track record supports the feasibility of sustainable events. Last November at Moscone Center, 7 Star diverted from landfills 84 percent of the waste produced at Green Festival, which drew 24,600 attendees who ate three meals a day.

The company uses cups and utensils made of a corn-based plastic that can be buried and turned to compost. Malki said the show produced 40 cubic yards of material that will be sold as mulch, 60 cubic yards of recycling and only 10 cubic yards of trash.

On the service side, Shepard is out to prove that general contractors can be part of the solution. The company adopted its new initiative last February with three coinciding goals: to be a green company, to use green processes and to provide green products.

It already touts some successes with its clients, such as landfill diversions and carbon offsets. Perhaps more impressive, Shepard has acted locally, installing a new filtration system in its paint booth, and changing the grading on its roof to keep runoff from contaminating the local water supply.

But, Maples said, "we feel we have only scratched the surface of the overall potential." He's currently looking for less harmful alternatives for carpet, table plastic and graphic solutions, working with Meeting Strategies Worldwide on the development of a cohesive internal and external policy.

"You won't find anybody who says it isn't something we should be doing," said Wood. "But getting people to agree it's a good idea is one thing; translating it into action is another."

Nothing motivates like money, and Malki has an arsenal of evidence to demonstrate that being environmentally friendly is equal with being economical. One example: "If a building reduces its energy consumption by 30 percent, it saves $25,000 for every 50,000 sq. ft. of space used."

She added that the "take, make and throw away" mentality of the industrial age is outdated. "The Fortune 500 companies that have made economic and social commitments consistently are better producers than their counterparts who do nothing (to improve the environment)."

Maples agreed. He was certain that Shepard's program would be costly to launch, but "found that to be a green myth." Although Maples said every aspect of the program wasn't financially viable, "if we can change just one thing to impact the environment in a positive way, that's a start."