Common Ground.
Sustainability for the people who build the show.
A practical sustainability framework for the people who build, service, rig, freight, fabricate, and run trade shows. Four outcomes — carbon, circularity, non-toxic, people & governance. Three scales — company, show, and booth. Open math. An interactive learning platform inside. Built by ESCA & EDPA members.
Know what you need? Score your company · Score a show · Score a booth · The Monday List · Learn
Three steps to your first baseline.
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Step 1: Read the 5-minute primer
What this is, who it’s for, the four pillars in plain English and what the number means. No sustainability background needed.
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Step 2: Do the Monday List
Free, fast changes your team can start this week. No budget, no committee: water coolers, LED swaps, overnight shutoffs.
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Step 3: Take a baseline score
Score your company. Leave what you don’t know blank. Your first score is your baseline, the number you’ll measure against next year.
Running one event or one build? Score a show or score a booth.
Not sure which actions are yours? Pick your role for five first moves and a checklist for every phase of a show.
New to this? Read this first.
Sustainability can feel like a wall of acronyms and reports nobody wanted. It doesn’t have to be. Here’s the whole idea in five minutes, in plain English. You don’t need a sustainability background to use this.
A scorecard. You answer questions about how your company runs, and how a show is built. You get a number from 0 to 100. You use that number when a client, exhibitor, or venue asks about sustainability. You improve it over time. That’s the whole loop.
Official Service Providers (the official service contractors and crews running the whole floor), exhibit houses (the teams designing and building individual booths), I&D partners, producers, and individual exhibitors who want to score a single booth. A twelve-person shop or a national operation. Start wherever you are.
- Carbon — heat-trapping gas your work puts into the air (from trucks, power, materials).
- Circularity — how much of what you build gets used again, not thrown out.
- Non-Toxic — what chemicals and materials you refuse to use (PVC, foam-core, solvents).
- People & Governance — the humans, policies, and training behind the numbers.
Your score is a number out of 100. Higher is better. The number you care about is not this year’s score — it’s next year’s lift.
- Baseline. Whatever you score the first time is your baseline. That’s what you measure against.
- Direction over altitude. Illustrative example: a company moving from 42 to 58 is moving faster than a company holding at 78. Publish the slope.
- Every point is earned the same way. Each pillar, and the overall score, runs 0–100 on the same math. The named ranges (Seed, Sprout, Sapling, Canopy, Old Growth) are shorthand for score ranges, not certification levels or rankings.
- Comparable across scales. Company, show, and booth all use the same 0–100 math so the numbers can be read together.
Open the Company Profile tab. Leave what you don’t know blank. When you’re done, you’ll have a baseline — the thing you’ll measure against next year. That’s how everyone starts.
Why Common Ground.
Every booth we build consumes energy, materials, and freight — and someone else’s grandchildren inherit the cost. Doing this well is not a marketing angle — it’s a legacy call.
Solvent-based inks, high-VOC paints and adhesives release fumes, and cutting or heating some plastics and foams creates dust and smoke. Crews work closest to these materials. Choosing lower-emitting alternatives, and following each product’s Safety Data Sheet, supports a healthier workplace. Phasing these out is a health decision before it’s an environmental one.
Every crate trashed, every carpet to landfill, every overnight light left on — it’s margin walking out the door. Sustainability and smart operations are the same work.
- ◆Outcomes, not checkboxes. Carbon per sq ft. Reuse rate. Diversion rate. The numbers your clients actually want.
- ◆Company, show and booth, scored separately. A company with good policies can still run a wasteful show. We score each one on its own, honestly.
- ◆Open factors. Every emission factor names its source, and the Method page shows the math. No black box.
- ◆Industry trends, in aggregate only. Once enough members report, we plan to share anonymous industry-wide results. No company’s numbers are ever shown.
- ◆Built on the committee’s work. The committee’s original twelve practices, the 6 Rs and continuous improvement, now grown to sixteen practices that roll up to the four outcomes.
ESCA and EDPA members build, service, rig, freight, fabricate, and run trade shows across North America. This framework was written by the people doing the work — not by consultants, not by regulators — so the measurements and the realities match.
Voluntary. Self-assessment. Transparent. Member-owned.
What’s inside this site
Everything organized so you can use it end-to-end or dip into whatever you need on a given day.
- Monday ListFree. Fast. Start this week. No budget, no committee. Water coolers, LED swaps, overnight shutoffs: hand this to your team.
- Practices16 operating practices, each a full lesson. Open any practice for its what / why / do / measure / terms.
- Tips & RoadmapsTips, tricks, and 30 / 60 / 90-day roadmaps. Small changes, big impact. Real things your team can do this quarter.
- Company scoreScore your company annually. Policies, fleet, facilities, people: the rollup behind every project you run.
- Show scoreScore an entire show, start to finish. Footprint, diversion, consolidation, materials, one event at a time.
- Booth scoreScore a single booth. For exhibitors, custom builders, and anyone who wants to know where one build stands.
- PillarsThe four outcomes we measure. Carbon · Circularity · Non-Toxic · People & Governance.
- Who does whatEvery role on the show floor, what it controls, and how it proves it.
- Materials libraryEvery floor, wall, graphic, ink. Reusability & recyclability for the substances on your BOM, from the committee’s work.
- GlossaryEvery term in plain English. 150+ searchable definitions. The whole sustainability vocabulary, demystified.
- MethodHow the math works. No black box. Scoring formulas, emission factors, honest limits of what this tool is and isn’t.
- LegalDisclaimers, in plain English. Warranty, liability, claims, IP, privacy, antitrust. Every base covered.
Read the tab. Every claim must pass one question: “Could an independent third party verify this number in a week?” If the answer is no, rewrite or drop it. That’s how trust is built. That’s how trust is protected.