Pursuit of eco-friendliness helps event grow organically

The Canton Fair is one of the earliest fairs to become environmentally-friendly in China and its green efforts are paying off.

The implementation of a green Canton Fair not only promotes its own sustainable growth, but also provides green development experience for China's exhibition industry, organizers said.

The fair, normally held in Guangzhou twice a year in the capital of South China's Guangdong province, is taking place online from June 15 to 24, because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. With more than 60 years of development, the fair has grown into one of the largest exhibitions to promote the development of an open economy.

The China Foreign Trade Centre, the fair's organizer, has made efforts to explore a green development path for fair-hosting. 

By controlling the discharge of waste from exhibitions, the CFTC first put forward the goal of hosting low-carbon, environmentally friendly exhibitions and creating a top international green fair in 2012.

In 2014, the Ministry of Commerce said the Canton Fair would implement a green development plan from the 115th session of the event with the concepts of environmental protection and energy saving.

Organizers were called on to install all eco-friendly exhibition booths at the 120th Canton Fair in 2016, and reducing the consumption of water, electricity, gas and other resources. The proportion of eco-friendly exhibition booths increased from 50 percent at the 115th Canton Fair in 2014 to 100 percent within three years.

Since 2017, the Canton Fair's green development has entered a new stage featuring comprehensive improvement on quality. 

The CFTC is committed to establishing a systematic, standardized, information technology-based system to provide an industry benchmark for green development and create an ecosystem for green exhibitions.

Based on a guide to national standards for eco-friendly exhibition booths evaluation, compiled by the CFTC, the Standardization Administration of China initiated a research program in a bid to promote the green development of the exhibition industry.

The CFTC was awarded as China's most influential green enterprise brand by Xinhua in 2017. And its experience of green development has been included in China's green development model cases.