Yes, the results are in! The winners of the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association's first annual Zero Waste Design/Build Challenge (ZWC) are two companies that have been leading the way on Green exhibiting for a long time.
"...Reminds Me of Wild Hickory Nuts"
It's been decades since Euell Gibbons fixed this image of Green in our minds with his commercials for a popular breakfast cereal. Granola, rough-sawn wood, burlap, and cardboard — these became the design vocabulary for sustainability.
Not so long ago, companies like Keen and Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG earned headlines by thinking differently and using waste products as design elements. Keen built an award-winning exhibit utilizing old shipping pallets, while Heidelberg clad its booth with used printing plates. These were great steps forward because designers were beginning to realize that going Green doesn't necessarily mean going back to nature.
The Zero Waste Challenge was created to push designers to be even more creative. If going Green is about reducing pollution and waste, who says award-winning design needs to remind us of nature?
Small is Beautiful
New Hampshire-based Image4 earned top honors in the small exhibits category with a 10-by-20-foot "Tuscan Kitchen" for Cucina Aurora, a Boston-area boutique food start-up. The image of an Italian country cookery suggests heavy materials, such as marble and heavy timbers. In fact, that's what Image4's solution looks like.
But the booth employs a locally sourced, lightweight aluminum structure that contains 40 percent recycled content. The heavy-looking materials are, in fact, high-resolution dye sublimation prints on fabric and rigid panels made of locally sourced plastics that contain biodegrading agents.
The judges also responded to Image4's careful analysis of materials and shop practices, and their in-house procedures for reusing and up-cycling shop waste. The company has standardized procedures for utilizing shop scraps, minimizing one-time-use packing materials, and consolidating properties to maximize shipping efficiency. Thanks to Image4's approach, you can take your rustic kitchen with you.
Size Does Matter
For Freeman, the winner in the ZWC large exhibit category, "large" means "huge." The company's winning entry involved developing a modular display system that would reduce the amount of new material used, reduce shipping and packaging waste, reduce material handling costs and show labor, and save electricity by utilizing high-efficiency LED lighting.
Less than 4 percent of the display system was fabricated using new materials. Instead, Freeman repurposed materials from existing custom rental systems. Graphic skins utilized 100-percent recyclable honeycomb substrates. Like the aluminum frameworks, which can also be recycled, the graphic scans can be reused numerous times.
Freeman included shipping and on-site challenges in the design process, creating special racks and dollies to maximize packing efficiency while minimizing single-use packing materials. Certified SmartWay™ haulers moved the properties from shop to show floor. Thanks to Freeman, exhibitors in every industry can rent Greener exhibits that are practical, flexible, and attractive.
Reimagining Green
Image4 and Freeman embraced the goals of the Zero Waste Challenge by thinking about waste from end to end. Neither company substituted the exhibitor's design goals for a stereotypical Green image.
Instead, each fulfilled the exhibitor's goals in ways that conserved materials, reduced shop waste, minimized the shipping footprints, and saved weight and drayage costs while still providing the brand presentations their clients required. When these properties reach the end of their useful lives, most of the materials will be recycled, and those that can't will biodegrade rather than sit in landfills.
Congratulations to the inaugural ZWC winners! We can all learn from their examples. We can also thank the panel of independent, expert judges for their choices.
Speaking as the chair of the EDPA's Sustainable Exhibits Leadership Committee for a moment, I urge all of you to enter the ZWC this year. Designers and builders from across the industry are welcome to participate — membership in the EDPA is not a requirement. Any project that is completed before next November is eligible.
It's time to reimagine Green. This year's winners pushed the envelope and so can you. With all due respect to Mr. Gibbons, let's create exhibits that don't remind us of wild hickory nuts.
I remember you writing about the Zero Waste Challenge last year. Who won the competition? And what can I learn from the winners?
