An Eco Approach To Trade Shows

Last week, the EcoStardust team had the pleasure of attending our first ever trade show, the Indie Beauty Expo — the world's largest exposition of independently owned beauty brands — at the Old Truman Brewery in London. 

As an ethical indie company, this was a particularly exciting event indeed! We had the date in the ol’ glittery calendar for a while and we were super excited to be celebrating all things independent!

Attending exhibitions are an amazing way to connect and create long-term relationships with industry experts; however, trade shows, in general, can generate a lot of waste due to the amount of single-use printed materials and unnecessary giveaways.

In order to reduce EcoStardust’s carbon footprint, we took several steps to take a more sustainable approach when it comes to showcasing our products at trade shows.

Cardboard banner stands

When designing our banners to bring with us to the expo, we considered a few things to make our banners more eco-friendly and dual purpose.

As eco glitter enthusiasts, you can imagine we have a lot we want to tell the world about our glitter! That’s why we made all of our banners double sided so that they could display different images and messaging on each side. Future-proofing our banners makes them reusable for other events that we may attend in the future.

It’s a given, but we also wanted to ensure that our banners were made from eco-friendly and recyclable materials. Big up our local team of display experts who champion sustainability in exhibitions, Colour Studios, for creating such awesome eco banner stands made from recyclable cardboard.

They are also super lightweight - a great bonus!

Reusable Displays 

Being eye-catching at trade shows is super important — but that doesn’t mean that you can’t stand out using props from your existing kit! 

Everything that was brought with us to IBE is also used for an array of other events, so we reuse our festival stall decorations such as our lights, displays and even our carpet in order to dress our sparkly stand. 

In our eyes, sparkly decor is for all year round!

No Unnecessary Giveaways

From thousands of paper pamphlets to branded merch such as pens and calendars, these are amongst some of the biggest contributors of waste in trade shows since attendees usually come away with bags filled to the brim with swag! 

We like to keep things simple. We brought with us 1g glitter samples in biodegradable bags and attached them to our business cards (which are printed on recycled card). 

Along with bringing a minimal amount of leaflets with us, we also created a digital download pack where attendees can download a paperless version of all things EcoStardust. 

Leave No Trace

As with festivals and all other events that we attend, we take extra measures to make sure that we leave no trace. 

Whether that’s traces of glitter, signage, props or leaflets, we make a conscious effort to bring everything back with us ready to be reused.

Carbon Offsetting Our Travel

Every year we calculate the total mileage we have travelled as a business and donate to plant trees in the South West of England in order to carbon offset our travel.

We had such a wonderful time at IBE and we met so many lovely people in the indie beauty industry! Thank you to everyone who came by the stand.

If you have any more ideas on how we can be even more sustainable when it comes to trade shows, do let us know in the comments or send us over any suggestions to support@ecostardust.freshdesk.com