I learned something valuable about green exhibiting last week when I attended the monthly meeting of the Las Vegas chapter of the Exhibit Designers & Producers Assn. Where there's a will, there may not be a way – at least not one that's straight, clear and unobstructed.
The Las Vegas EDPA invited Harry Lewis, an attorney advisor with the U.S. Envrionmental Protection Agency, to speak at the meeting. Lewis is on an EPA committee charged with setting procurement standards that would require venues bidding to host government meetings to fulfill certain criteria of envirnomental friendliness and sustainability.
Lewis knows meetings and conventions, but, before he visited Las Vegas last week, he apparently knew little about exhibitions. An acquaintance of his from the Las Vegas EDPA took him to see the move-in of the Photo Marketing Assn. Intl. Annual Convention & Trade Show. Boy, was that an eye opener. Lewis was shocked by the huge amount of solid waste going into the garbage and, ostensibly, landfill. Little did he know, this happens every day in dozens of convention centers around the United States.
In discussing the problem of reducing such waste with the exhibit designers, installers and dismantlers, and audiovisual providers at the meeting, Lewis suggested that they, as an industry, band together and set minimum requirements of sustainability that venues would have to meet in order to earn their business.
It's natural he would look at it this way, coming at the problem from his particular perspective. To those present, however, the suggestion didn't make sense, because they have no say in the process of site selection – no direct ownership of the exhibition at all.
Lewis' view revealed inherent complexities in the production of exhibitions that could thwart wide-sweeping efforts at greening the industry. No, no, no, the attendees told him. The venues don't control the waste; they just rent the building out to the associations and management firms that produce the shows that make the waste. But the show managers aren't directly responsible for the waste, either, because they hire general contractors to oversee things like that. Of course, the general contractors aren't the only ones who produce waste; the exhibitors do too. Many of them want to be green, but appoint their own contractors to work on their booths, and these contractors are at the mercy of rules set by show managers and general contractors. And finally, the path does circle back around to the venues, which have the relationships with the local agencies that have to remove and dispose of the waste.
Ah, what a tangled web.
Poor Lewis seemed confused, and to tell you the truth, by the time we all finished enlightening him on the many layers of exhibition ownership and management, so was I. It's like a big buffet of pies: baked by hundreds of chefs and visited by just as many hungry people, each wanting as many slices as possible. How do you decide who does the dishes, and who foots the bill?
And as I looked around the room, I realized something else: The people who seem the most concerned about the problem may have the smallest voice.
A week after digesting it all, I can think of only one way to solve this problem. What if all the parties involved stopped pointing out what they can't do, what they're not responsible for, and each one stepped up to the plate to take care of what it can?
March 31, 2008 In response to:Layers of Green Irv Plank commented:
I have been seeing the wood waste from a builders stand point for years. While attednig trade shows.as stated in article,there is multiple layers of service companies to address this problem. But- it can start with the venue- just like my own community demanding and providing containers for recyclables. Start there and the venue will have to create a waste cherg- again it would be passed down to the exhibitors just the it is. but if someone would oversee that costs are small you would see all service providers working together to help with waste and we can oversee each other to make sure all is participating. "Build it and they will come".
