A Noble Endeavor: Using Recycled Waste in Your Next Trade Show Design

August 23, 2013

Lisa Apolinski

Lisa Apolinski is a professional speaker, blogger, and digital strategist. With her company, 3DogWrite.com, she works with event managers to get their message to attendees, particularly through digital channels, on and off the show floor.

I had the chance to sit down with Bob Noble, president of Noble Environmental Technologies. As a licensed architect, he knows a thing or two about materials and design. And I was intrigued at the introduction of his new product. What if, instead of having materials decide your trade show booth design, it was the other way around? And, what if you could impact the environment while doing so?

The product, called ECOR®, uses paper, agricultural and forest product waste and develops a ‘recycled stew’ to produce fiber building blocks that can then be used to develop a multitude of different geometries and shapes.

It allows design versatility, environmental characteristics, and engineering efficiencies to have a high strength to weight ration. What’s more, the resulting ECOR® product is lightweight and 100 percent recycled, bio based and nontoxic.

With the modularity of the panels, you can realize new shapes and forms in any color or texture for your booth, as the product is denser than plywood. Think built-ins, furniture, displays, signage, walls, acoustic panels, even performance stages.

With the material leading the design effort, you can also have shapes typically not available in a panel (curves, angles, even texture).

It liberates new design, while taking material out of the waste stream, and it is a cost-effective solution for shipping and installation because it is so lightweight. Once you are done with the panels, they can be recycled again into another creation.

Now, you may want to know pricing, and while the cost of the ECOR® panels is slightly higher than your standard trade show material, Noble Environmental Technologies is working towards a lower cost point so that trade show design companies have another solid choice for their clients.

New design and truly environmentally friendly? That is noble indeed.

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