Benefits for the Environment

There’s no denying it – the event industry is one of the top polluting industries in the United States. And it is no surprise, with over 1.8M corporate and business meetings, trade shows, conventions, congresses, incentive events and other meetings. And more often than not, the common result of these events is paper and tons of it.

Studies have shown that on average 80+% of tradeshow and conference materials never makes it back home – it’s left at the hotels and airports! And of the materials, even less is “used” as there is no viable way to fully utilize it in comparison to our digital delivery on the Presenter USB. So it becomes polluting clutter.

So what do we know? Our world is facing a dire water shortage and we must take steps to reduce, reuse and recycle. Less than .6 of 1% of the water on the planet can sustain human life. That same .6 of 1% also is used in the production of paper and other materials. And a child dies in under every minute of every day due to water related disease / access to clean water.

There’s more. Paper manufacturing is the largest industrial user of water per pound of finished product (source: American Forest and Paper Association). It takes at least 10 liters of water to make a single piece of paper – think about that next time you receive an eight page brochure only to toss it at the next available trash can. That same 10 liters is enough to provide basic life-support for one person for about 3 days.

There’s a broad range of thinking about the impact of climate change too, but despite one’s viewpoint, pro or con, there are many “green” and truly sustainable benefits to using ViridiSTOR’s Green Box™ Solution for minimizing the use of paper-based materials handouts at events around the world. All while actually reducing costs and creating new revenue streams – no other solution of this type can make this claim.

The tangible benefits of using the Green Box™ Solution to reduce the environmental impact of events and decreasing the carbon and water footprint for all concerned – including attendees – can be measured.

Let’s take a look at the possibilities, using a hypothetical “average” trade show that has 500 exhibitors and total attendance of 10,000 visitors.

If each exhibitor produces a 12-page brochure and distributes it to every attendee, that results in creation of 60 million pages of paper documents. That weighs in at 300 tons of paper for this show. The 300-ton volume of paper is created by the processing of nearly 7,200 trees which absorb carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, which equates to the output of approximately 150+ cars on the road for an entire year. Moreover, 6,856,039 gallons of water are polluted, which is enough to supply over 20,400 people basic life-support water for an entire year.

And this is only ONE event example!

According to the U.S. Forest Service, maintaining trees remains one of the cheapest and most effective means of drawing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and of generating oxygen. A single mature tree can absorb CO2 at a rate of 48 pounds per year and can provide enough oxygen for a family of four for a full year, the numbers become astronomical. Over a 50-year lifetime, each tree thus contributes in many ways:

• It can generate more than $31,000 worth of oxygen
• It can provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control
• It can recycle $37,500 worth of water
• It can control $31,250 worth of soil erosion

The net result is that if these 500 exhibitors distributed their brochures electronically via the ViridiSTOR Green Box™ Solution, rather than printing them, each of the 10,000 attendees would be saving the equivalent of about three-quarters of a tree and would be eliminating the release of over 168 pounds of greenhouse gases and 686 gallons of waste water. And this is merely one of the more than tens of thousands of shows – many of them far larger than 500 exhibitors and 10,000 visitors – that take place every year around the world.

 

ViridiSTOR’s common sense approach to sustainability is making a difference. One that can be measured.