“Our exhibitors need carpet.” We hear you, and the use-case is valid, but maybe there are other solutions too. Carpet earns its place at events for practical reasons: acoustics, accessibility, and the finished look exhibitors expect from a stand or a show floor. Those needs aren’t up for debate. However, what’s usually assumed is that meeting these needs requires the same methods we’ve always used: cut fresh, laid once, then sent to landfill or incineration afterwards. This assumption is where the excuse falls apart.
Acoustics matter more than they might first appear. Exhibition halls are typically large, hard-floored spaces prone to echo and footfall noise, and that reverberation is a genuine barrier for attendees with hearing loss or hearing aids trying to follow conversations or announcements over crowd noise. Soft flooring absorbs sound in a way hard surfaces don’t, cutting down the echo and footfall noise that builds up across a large, hard-floored hall. That’s one of the more overlooked accessibility features of carpet.
Carpet also does practical work underfoot. It secures trailing cables and gives wheelchair users, cane users and anyone with a mobility aid a level, predictable surface to move across. How it’s specified matters just as much as the material itself: low pile, securely fixed, with edges that are bevelled or taped down rather than left to curl. Thick, loose or poorly fixed carpet can be as much of a hazard as none at all, so the standard the carpet meets is worth as much attention as possible.
The bottom line is that meeting both the acoustic and mobility brief is possible without buying carpet new for every event.
The reality behind the excuse
Carpet is the highest-emitting build material in the TRACE dataset, and 78% of it is used just once. That figure sits inside a wider pattern isla has tracked through the Temperature Check reports: most production materials, including foamex, MDF, carpet and paint, still come from virgin resources. Through this data, we know that events have a waste problem and a sourcing one.
Reusable temporary flooring meets the same brief, acoustics, accessibility and finish without the single-use waste. It works best when the venue owns and reuses the stock, which turns flooring from a per-event purchase into shared infrastructure.
What this looks like in practice
Swapping carpet doesn’t mean compromising on how a stand looks or feels underfoot. A few practical starting points:
- Work with your venue – Some venues own and reuse their own flooring stock, which is an ideal situation. However, many don’t so reducing carpet wastage often comes down to conversation about prioritising where carpet is really needed and reducing it where it is not.
- Look at single-polymer, latex-free alternatives – Rewind Carpet, listed in isla’s Materials Library, is made from 100% polypropylene rather than the mixed latex construction of traditional event carpet. Post-event carpet is pelletised and can be recycled multiple times into new stock, at a comparable price to standard carpet. Environmental Product Declarations, third-party verified data on a product’s environmental impact, are available for accredited materials like Rewind, so the choice can be backed with real figures
- Work with suppliers that reuse – Lean on working with suppliers that identify reuse opportunities (where the carpet is kept as carpet rather than recycled) and only accept recycling as a last resort.
- Track what happens after the show closes. Tracking allows you to see opportunities for intervention, either now or in the future and provides you with confidence that the carpet is actually being reused.
The business case for taking it seriously
Waste data capture across the industry improved from under two-thirds of events in 2022 to 72% in 2024, which means more organisers can now see exactly how much of their build spend is being thrown away after a single use. Carpet is a clear example: material bought once, laid once, binned once, with disposal, replacement and transport costs on top of the original purchase.
Reusable and recycled flooring options are priced comparably to traditional carpet and the savings really show up over multiple events.
The practical next step is to ask your next venue or stand contractor what flooring options they already hold in stock before specifying anything new. Often, the reusable option is already sitting in a warehouse somewhere, waiting to be requested.
Created by members of the events industry, the Materials Library sets out vetted, lower-impact alternatives to event materials, like Rewind Carpet in more detail, including cost, durability and end-of-life information.
