Sustainability in exhibitions: progress, not perfection
By Max Southall, co-founder ecoform
Sustainability is one of those subjects that has become very common to talk about in the exhibition industry, but much harder to talk about honestly.
Almost every supplier, agency and venue now has something to say about recyclable materials, reusable structures, responsible sourcing or carbon reduction – and none of that is a bad thing. The difficulty is that the language can sometimes get ahead of the reality.
Exhibitions are temporary by nature. We design and manufacture things, transport them to venues, send teams to install them, use power while they are there and then dismantle them again. Some of those materials will be reused, some will be recycled and some, despite everyone’s best intentions, will eventually become waste. There is an environmental impact in that process, and we add zero value in pretending otherwise.
For us at Formation, the more useful way of looking at sustainability is as a process of continual improvement rather than something that can ever really be declared finished. We have made progress in a number of areas and we are proud of that. There are also things we are still working through, and areas where the answer is not always obvious.
That feels like a more credible position. Honesty and a willingness to acknowledge the limits of what has been achieved are, in our experience, the two leading characteristics of meaningful progress.
The problem with partial claims
One of the biggest problems with the way sustainability is discussed is that a single positive attribute can be used to describe an entire project. A material might be recyclable, but that does not automatically make the stand sustainable. A structure might be reusable, but that only has value if there is a genuine plan for it to be used again. Even responsibly sourced materials still have to be processed, transported and eventually dealt with at the end of their life.
None of this means those choices are meaningless – far from it. Better materials, better sourcing and better waste routes all matter. But they are only part of the overall picture.
In our experience, a lot of the most meaningful improvements are practical rather than headline-grabbing. They come from designing a main structure so it can be reused across multiple events, reducing the volume of graphics that need replacing, using hired furniture where it makes sense, improving how a stand packs down, or establishing whether one vehicle can do a job that previously needed two. Individually, none of those things sounds particularly dramatic. Over a full exhibition programme, they can make a significant difference.
Custom design and sustainability are not at odds
Formation is a custom design and build agency, and that remains at the centre of what we do. Our clients want spaces that feel specific to their brand and work properly for the audience they are trying to reach. We are not interested in a world where every stand has to look modular or where sustainability becomes a reason to limit creative ambition.
The challenge is to think more carefully about what sits behind the finished design. A bespoke stand can still be engineered with future use in mind. Structural elements can be retained, furniture can be reused, graphics can be designed so that only campaign-specific areas need changing, and core assets can often be adapted across different stand sizes. We can also work across our entire supply chain to drive better decisions at every stage.
That thinking becomes much easier when we are involved early and when we understand a client’s wider exhibition programme rather than looking at each event in isolation.
The regulatory environment is changing
The regulatory side of sustainability is becoming harder to ignore, particularly for brands exhibiting internationally.
Germany is the clearest example. The direction of travel there is towards greater transparency around materials, reuse, waste and environmental claims. AUMA and fwd: published new guidance in 2026 around designing exhibitions so that materials can be avoided where possible, reused where practical and returned into appropriate material cycles afterwards.
There is also much greater scrutiny around the language businesses use. From 27 September 2026, claims such as “sustainable” or “recyclable” in Germany need to be demonstrable and verifiable. A broad environmental claim about an entire product cannot be justified by one favourable element within it – a distinction that feels particularly relevant to exhibitions, where it is easy to describe a whole stand as sustainable because one material within it has strong environmental credentials.
Waste regulation is tightening too. The revised EU Waste Shipment Regulation, which has applied since 21 May 2026, places stricter requirements around the movement and documentation of waste across borders. For international exhibition programmes, that creates an important distinction between transporting components back for genuine reuse and moving materials that have effectively become waste.
The UAE sits at a different point in its regulatory journey but is moving in the same direction. The final phase of Dubai’s single-use plastics ban came into force on 1 January 2026, extending restrictions to cups, lids, plates, cutlery and other disposable items. On its own that may sound more relevant to hospitality than stand construction, but it reflects the wider expectation taking hold across the region – around what is brought onto site, how much of it is single use, and what happens to it afterwards.
For exhibitors, the important point is not that Germany or the UAE suddenly requires every stand to meet one defined sustainability standard, because they do not. It is that the environment is changing. There is more scrutiny, more expectation around evidence and less room for vague claims. Being able to explain what a stand is made from, what will be reused, how waste will be dealt with and what sits behind any sustainability assertion is becoming increasingly important.
What ecoform gives us
ecoform gives Formation another route within that conversation. Its reusable timber system allows us to create structures that can be assembled, dismantled and reconfigured across multiple events while retaining a finish that feels considered and design-led. For some projects, ecoform may form most of the build. In others, it sits alongside more traditional bespoke elements. There will also be projects where a fully custom build remains the right answer.
The benefit is not that ecoform replaces custom design. It is that it gives us another way to achieve the same creative objective while reducing the volume of new material that needs to be manufactured on repeat programmes.
That distinction matters to us because we do not want sustainability to become a claim applied regardless of what the project actually involves.
Measurement over claims
The same principle applies to accreditation and external standards. Planet Mark, our ISO work, ESSA membership and wider industry initiatives such as Better Stands all have value because they introduce structure and accountability. They make us measure things properly, review our processes and think more critically about where improvements can be made. What they do not do is make a business perfect.
In some ways, the value is in the opposite. Once you start measuring and documenting performance properly, you find areas that need more work. That can be uncomfortable, but it is useful. It gives you something real to improve rather than something vague to talk about.
There are still parts of exhibition delivery without simple answers. International transport has an impact. Short lead times can make the most efficient solution harder to achieve. Some materials do not yet have an obvious lower-impact alternative that performs in the same way. One-off bespoke projects will always create different challenges to a long-term reusable programme.
There is a temptation in sustainability conversations to only talk about what has gone well. But that creates the impression that the difficult parts have been solved, when they have not.
Think in programmes, not projects
For exhibitors, one of the most useful shifts is to start thinking about events as a programme rather than a series of individual builds. If we know a client is attending six, eight or ten events over the next couple of years, there is far more opportunity to design intelligently around that – asking which components can move from one show to another, which elements genuinely need to change, whether the same structure can adapt across several footprints, and whether it is more efficient to store something or hire it locally.
That does not mean every stand has to look the same. It means the design process takes account of what happens after the first event. That, for us, is where the most meaningful progress sits.
We are not claiming Formation has solved sustainability. What we can say is that we are taking it seriously, measuring as much of what we do as we can, and making better decisions as a result.
There are achievements to be proud of, and there are areas where we still have work to do. Both of those things can be true at the same time. If the industry is going to make genuine progress, we all need to be more comfortable saying so.
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