Go Green: Environmentally Friendly Promotional Products

Trade show exhibitors who offer promotional products attract traffic to their exhibits and leave lasting impressions on attendees who visit their space. What’s more, environmentally-friendly promotional items that are branded help increase brand awareness and illustrate your company’s environmental and social commitments.

Learn how environmentally friendly trade show giveaways help raise your trade show profile and create positive brand awareness.

Create an Environmentally Friendly Promotional Product

Knowing how to select promotional products to give away on the show floor can be challenging, especially when you want your giveaways to be environmentally responsible. Luckily, there are easy ways to identify whether a trade show promotional items is “green” or not.

How to Identify Environmentally Friendly Promotional Items:

  • When selecting electronic promotional items like flashlights or calculators, choose products that are designed to save energy or are solar rather than battery-powered.
  • Disposable giveaways and marketing collateral should be made from recycled, biodegradable or reusable materials to lessen landfill waste and depletion of natural resources.
  • Apparel giveaways such as t-shirts, hoodies and fleeces should be made from organic fabric materials and with environmentally-safe dyes.

Related: Spring into these 5 Fresh Trade Show Booth Ideas

Reusable Giveaway Ideas

Reusable giveaway items—like tote bags, snack containers or water bottles—can help communicate your environmentally friendly messaging at trade shows. Electing to stamp your branding on a reusable item not only reduces the need for disposable items, it also helps reinforce your marketing message as recipients will see your logo every time they use their giveaway.

Reusable Giveaway Ideas:

  • Stainless steel mugs and tumblers
  • BPA-free water bottles
  • Ethically-sourced canvas tote bags
  • To-go containers and lunch bags

“Green” Electronic Giveaways

Technology is not only great for wowing attendees at trade shows with large digital screens and multimedia centers, it is also ideal for reducing exhibitors’ carbon footprint. Marketing collateral such as brochures and catalogs can be expensive to print and ship to a trade show. What’s worse, the majority of collateral pieces are thrown away by attendees instead of recycled. If you want to help your budget and the planet, consider loading branded USB drives made from recycled materials with PDF versions of your collateral.

“Green” Electronic Giveaway Ideas:

  • Solar-powered electronic device chargers
  • LED flashlights with recyclable batteries or hand cranks
  • Solar-powered pedometers and heart rate monitors

Giveaway Greenery

Being environmentally conscious not only means reducing your carbon footprint, it also means repairing damage done by greenhouse gases to the earth’s atmosphere. Greenery giveaways, such as planted flowers and seed paper, are not just beautiful keepsakes, they also convert CO2 into breathable oxygen. Greenery giveaways are also very unique, so attendees are more than likely to want to keep your giveaways.

Related: Plan Smarter with Apogee’s Trade Show Timeline Planner

Be sure to brand some part of your giveaways so recipients remember you and the trade show.

Greenery Giveaway Ideas:

  • Seed packet bookmarks
  • Succulent plants in a branded pot
  • Indoor/office gardening kits
  • Bamboo saplings in branded glasses

With so many environmentally-friendly trade show giveaways available, you can easily hand out memorable and effective marketing promotions to attendees while doing your part to keep the earth we all share healthy.

Want more great trade show ideas? Get our Guide on the Top Trade Show Trends to Watch