Greenbuild Top 5 Take Outs

Greenbuild 2022

By Hannah Preston, Account Director at Ignition

Ignition client, Holcim exhibited for the first time at Greenbuild, San Francisco. A fabulous Show trailblazing the green focus in the Construction and associated industries – read on for my 5 top take-outs from my time there.

Top 5 take-outs

1. Multiple different industries, multiple different approaches

Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Consulting, Education, Fitness, Charity, Technology, Renewable Energy, Plumbing & Water systems, Carpentry & Timber, Services

Many of the smaller stands I spoke to represented companies testing the water at Greebuild with a smaller space, typically a 10x10. However, a lot of these companies exhibit at different tradeshows relevant to their industry and quite often with much bigger booth spaces. As the green momentum builds with sustainability and the planet at the forefront of many agendas, Greenbuild was an opportunity for these successful companies to dip their toe in the water to see how they can start to protect the environment by having a presence.

By contrast there were some smaller companies, whose business model was entirely dedicated to sustainability and re-use who were exhibiting for the first time, or who had made the significant commitment to a 10x10 space in the hope of attracting investors. These tended to be much younger, smaller companies.

2. My favourite product

VOSS (an automotive supplier) has branched out to develop a new product which is ‘Trivere’ by VOSS - A climate-neutral exterior building facade solution for sustainable clean energy and reduction of CO2. This product looked really cool. It is a three-in-one revolving Green Wall – Greenery, LED, and Solar Panel!

It enables you to have plants on the outside of a building that provides a cooling effect, great optics, noise reduction due to high surface area, cleans the air as it works, and insulates the building. It also has an irrigation system that recycles the water used.

This was their first show, and they are looking for feedback as they are about to launch the product.

3. Water re-use & heat-for-free revolution. Utilising a toilet to Glamourise water recycling!

Niagara - High power, low maintenance, no waste. Providing plumbers and engineers a toilet with reduced needs and maximum performance.

Epic Clean tech - decentralized water treatment system safely recycles up to 95% of a building's wastewater (greywater or blackwater) and creates three sustainable outputs:

Recycled water for non-potable applications
Recovered energy from wastewater heat
Soil amendments that are high quality and carbon rich

Natural Current – whilst his stand design could do with a little support the product itself drew attention, Sun Ray, solar powered pumps!

4. Going Digital and No edible freebies!

Whilst there wasn’t too much literature being handed out which was good to see, the giveaways were limited. Many delegates had switched to digital business cards although there was an appetite for a physical business card with those I spoke to, for that in person networking connection. Within the limited selection of freebies there were some great sustainable ideas such as pencils with a choice of seeds (instead of rubbers) that could be planted, bamboo pencil and pen sets, wooden USB sticks etc, but this is one of the first shows I’ve been to in a while where there was virtually no food or drinks being handed out! Holcim was the only stand with a substantial offering in the form of Haagen Daaz Ice creams in exchange for educating conversation! Besides a few chocolates here and there, there wasn’t a barista in sight!

5. Focus on the GREEN

My favourite part of the Show was talking to like-minded exhibitors and seeing all the amazing ideas focusing on sustainability, re-use, ethical behaviour and green innovation and knowing that progress is starting to be made and that people are keen to see a change in the Construction industry as well as many other industries…

Everyone knows Congress days are long – and quite often you have no idea what the weather is doing outside, so it was a refreshing change to have a nice array of greenery to meet you at the entrance and placed around the halls in some of the feature areas.

On a walk around the exhibition with our client and my colleague we came across a lovely feature from A.B. Jones & Co. This was a social venture to create community food boxes that would then be shipped out to those in need. We each packed a box with a selection of fruit and vegetables and wrote a message on the side for the recipient. These were then stacked in a pile along with all the other delegate community boxes marked with unique messages!