A Further Step Toward the Sustainable Trade Show Booth

On the path to a more eco-friendly trade show booth, Müller Messebau has found a recyclable alternative for another building material: fabric coverings. Despite all our efforts around modular booth construction and reusability, fabric coverings have always had a short lifespan—once they get noticeably dirty, booth dimensions change, or new graphics and messaging are needed, they have to be produced from scratch. Until now, fabric coverings were made from at least two types of plastic: the fabric panels themselves from PET fibers, and the piping used to stretch the fabric into the frames from silicone. Because of this mix of materials, the fabric panels could only be thrown away as general waste.

Starting now, Müller Messebau offers two fabric coverings made from a single material, allowing them to be recycled as pure, single-stream material: an opaque option and a translucent one for backlit trade show walls. Both fabrics are made entirely of polyester and are printed using a sublimation process with water-based or solvent-free inks. At the end of their life cycle, we send the fabric coverings back to our supplier, where they're collected and prepped for recycling. The booth materials are then turned into high-grade foams used in the automotive industry for seat cushions, thermal insulation, seals, and more. These premium fabric coverings offer another advantage, too: they fold easily and don't need to be rolled onto long cardboard cores. That cuts down on packaging material and makes shipping simpler.