Posted by

Barry Siskind

Community Manager

While I am convinced that most of us believe in the altruistic goals of green exhibiting, there may be some misconception about the show organizers’ role in this new wave.

Last April I spoke at AFIDA’s annual conference in Ecuador where I addressed this topic. It is my belief that organizers can adopt some important green initiatives such as reducing the amount of carpet, turning off engines at loading docks, saving on electricity and reducing the waste going to landfills.  But from my perspective I see a much larger role for show organizers.

Organizers sit on a bridge that begins at one end with the facilities, spans a great divide and ends with the millions of end users of products and services..

One positive step for organizers is to take a serious pro-active green strategy and select facilities that are of like thinking. The next step is to do what’s necessary to help exhibitors adopt green thinking. This means helping them find environmentally friendly products to use in their displays, reducing the wait times for them to set-up and dismantle or encouraging them to think about the amount of paper they are using.  Each of these seemingly small changes trickles up to a much greater audience, the customers who the organizer rarely meets but can greatly affect. If each show organizer makes one small movement toward environmental stewardship, their collective strength creates massive change.

To paraphrase a well-worn metaphor; the best show organizers can do is to plant one tree and if it’s done properly it will grow into a forest.