For Environmental Work At Chelsea Flower Show
The Exhibition News Awards is the industry’s leading event recognising excellence in the world of exhibitions, and Octink has been shortlisted as a finalist in The Green Award category in recognition of the signage re-use and recycling regime it successfully operated at The 2009 Chelsea Flower Show for The Royal Horticultural Society.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) appointed Octink to handle all the signage and branding at the 2009 Chelsea Flower Show. This involved planning, designing and installing over 4,500 individual display items throughout the grounds, ranging from giant 50’ branding banners to small wayfinding signs.
In past shows, a large proportion of the display materials ended up in landfill. However Octink, through careful planning and innovative thinking, re-used and recycled an impressive 97 per cent of the display material and, as a result of this success, has been awarded the signage contract for the 2010 Show.
In recent years, the RHS has sought to make the Chelsea Flower Show highly sustainable and has set a target of 90 per cent for recycling the gardens. Although a similar target is not imposed on external suppliers, Octink took the initiative by seeking to recycle as much as possible of the show’s signage and branding materials. 97 per cent were either re-used or recycled, leaving just 3 per cent to be sent to landfill.
Octink considered the potential for recycling at the earliest stages, choosing a forward looking supplier with similar values to provide all the materials for the signage. Materials were selected on the basis of their suitability for recycling.
At the end of the Chelsea Flower Show, Octink brought all the signage back to its headquarters in Brentford, where it was sorted into dedicated recycling cages and then transported back to the manufacturing source for recycling. Octink will take recycling to even higher levels in 2010. In addition to re-using signs from the 2009 Show, Octink will, for the first time, use new signs made of substrates with ‘closed loop’ properties. This enables the signs to be recycled into new panels for future use.
The ultimate winner in this category will be announced on Friday 7th May, and decided by the votes of Exhibition News readers. And while delighted to be a finalist, Octink CEO William Tyler is now calling on business friends and colleagues to cast their vote for the Octink submission (registration required and voting ends today) to celebrate sustainable business practice and the huge environmental savings that were made at this prestigious event.
April 16, 2010