Sustainability
Better Stands: Is it progress or theatre?
Theo Reilly speaks to Nick Marks, Ben Wielgus and Anna Abdelnoor about sustainability initiative Better Stands. Is it a genuine step forward, or a modest fix for a deeper problem?
ome years ago, big wigs in
S the exhibition sector set up a credentialing system to tackle one of the mosttalked-about industry problems – sustainability. The likes of Informa, RX, Clarion and UFI put their heads together and came up with Better Stands – an initiative that awards exhibitors with a badge ranging from Bronze to Gold based on how reusable their stand was.
Of course, it’ s good to have eyes on the topic. It is good to push the conversation forward. But not everyone is convinced that this initiative puts us on the right track. We spoke to one such industry figure, Nick Marks – who recently launched ESG management platform TIM – as well as Ben Wielgus of Informa and Anna Abdelnoor of sustainability firm ISLA.
In Nick’ s opinion, Better Stands sets the bar too low. Awarding an exhibitor a Bronze badge simply for not chucking their stand in a skip post-show isn’ t the progress we need, in his eyes. And giving Gold to an exhibitor who reuses their stand on one sole occasion isn’ t setting the bar high enough.
How does Better Stands work? The focus of Better Stands is on reusability. It uses a 10-point checklist that covers every element of an exhibition stand, from platforms and lighting to carpeting and the stand itself. To qualify for Bronze or Silver, a selection of these elements must be reused – for Gold, all 10 must be reused
( except floor coverings and graphics, which can be recycled).
Adhering to Better Stands’ framework guarantees that at least some of the elements of a stand are reused. Even if they are only reused once, these are items that would have circulated as waste. They have been plucked out of that cycle( albeit temporarily) – and that is a good thing.
But how much progress are we really making on this track? Playing devil’ s advocate, we could say that we’ re setting the bar fairly low for what is a very important problem area for the industry to address. Should a stand be awarded Better Stands Gold when it was reused once and subsequently tossed in a skip? Is that the highest echelon of sustainability we can think up?
“ You can argue that the bar needs to be set low to drive engagement which has been notoriously difficult in this space,” Nick said.“ But this just feels like it’ s created by the industry for the industry – self-regulated and self-fulfilling.”
Left: Nick Marks, founder of sustainability consultant TIM
Risk of declaring victory too early The real risk could be that measures such as these stop us from going further. That we pat ourselves on the back and close the case.
In Nick’ s view, too much airtime is given to materials. Travel, he tells me, is a much bigger problem.“ If you’ re exhibiting in Milan, you’ re better off picking a local stand builder that uses unsustainable materials than the most sustainable stand builder in the world that’ s driving down from the UK or Poland.”
Nick tells me there’ s a trend of sweating the small stuff in trade show sustainability. We’ ll flip a gasket over reusable cups, while simultaneously trucking in suppliers from all corners of the globe.“ Like I said, the key thing is to look at the whole process from start to finish.”
Midway through our conversation, Nick raised an interesting point.“ Companies are bored of us dumping our sustainability problems onto them,” he said.“ Fundamentally, event managers want these solutions. All the data shows that they want to exhibit sustainably, they just need the right support.”
Nick stresses that he thinks Better Stands is a step in the right direction.“ It shows that important people have an interest in fixing the problem,” he says. With that said, he has become pessimistic about the ability of the industry to solve this by itself. His approach now is to change the industry from the outside.
“ Our strategy is to work with big business. We can actually save money for these companies while reducing their footprint. We’ ve drawn up full-spectrum sustainability reports for Dolby, Visa and CBRE – the world’ s biggest real estate firm. For CBRE, we were able to reduce their carbon footprint by 63 % for 13 % less budget.”
What Anna Abdelnoor makes of Better Stands TIM isn’ t the only consultant taking
34 Issue 1 2026 www. exhibitionworld. co. uk