The drive to encourage and reward exhibitors for ‘going green’ with the award of the second ever IMEX Green Exhibitor Award to Visit London at the show’s Gala Dinner.
The award is made to a single exhibitor at Messe Frankfurt who is judged to have made the best and most quantifiable efforts to minimise the environmental impact of their attendance at the show. It recognises that many exhibiting companies want to lessen the environmental impact of exhibiting but that they also need an incentive to change their ways.
In the judges’ opinions, Visit London’s approach to its stand at IMEX not only paid attention to the creative requirements of an exhibition trade show booth, but also gave preference to environmentally-preferable products that reduce waste, can be re-used and are made of recycled materials.
Judges were impressed by Visit London’s attention to detail and its documented event environmental policy, which includes a Lifecycle Audit. Results of last year’s post-IMEX Audit encouraged Visit London to dramatically reduce its use of printed marketing materials for 2007, preferring instead to provide information on a USB. Visit London offered visitors bottled water supplied by ‘belu’, a scheme which uses its profits to fund clean water projects around the world. The company also decided to use as many local German staff as possible to save the environmental cost of sending London-based personnel to Frankfurt. The organisation already operates a carbon offset programme for both personnel and freight travel.
In addition to Visit London, the efforts of the Kenyan Tourism Board and Sri Lanka Convention Bureau were also applauded.