UFI: Now Sustainability Initiative

This is remarkable: practically at the same time as the call from Expodata Live Communication for a Global Sustainable Exhibition Day, the international trade fair association UFI has SDG database for the exhibition industry launched. It aims to extend the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the exhibition industry. UFI President Kai Hattendorf (pictured) says: "It is important that companies, including those from our industry, contribute to the goals of the United Nations' sustainability efforts and we are happy to see the publication of our sustainability report."

The UFI initiative is a good approach. But there were already impulses from the trade show industry before the UFI initiative. Under its chairman Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, the Düsseldorf-based world's leading trade fair K started the initiative to prevent the huge loss of food in the world in the context of the Interpack packaging trade fair (Fig.) and in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the WHO, every year 30 percent of the world's food production is lost after the harvest or spoils in stores, in the home or at providers in the catering industry.

Now the UFI Global Exhibition Day GED launched in 2015, which had its anniversary on June 5, 2018, is getting an extension, not to say the necessary one. The exhibition industry is only credible in the long run if it first cares about less material waste and then actually manages to reduce it substantially. The UFI project "The Exhibition Industry and the UN SDGs" was initiated by the UFI Working Group on Sustainable Development and in collaboration with Greenview, a member of the same Working Group. In 2019, UFI launched its own UFI Sustainable Development Award. It recognizes companies with an innovative communication campaign that has led to behavioral changes in the exhibition industry. The UFI Best Practices Sustainability Report can be found here: Ufi.org.