The show’s over. The keynotes landed. The product demos went off. Thousands of attendees walked away inspired.
Now comes the part the events industry doesn’t talk about.
The signage gets pulled and tossed. The structures get disassembled and dumped. The carpet gets rolled up and sent to a landfill. In a matter of hours, the physical environment that took months to plan, design, and build becomes waste — an enormous volume of single-use material produced for a few days of impact and discarded the moment the lights go off.
It’s the industry’s most persistent problem. And most event professionals will tell you it’s simply the cost of doing business.
Angie Hopkins — Director of In-Person Experiences (IPX) at Microsoft — has spent her career proving that it doesn’t have to be.
She leads production workstreams for some of the biggest flagship events in tech, managing the full physical build for Microsoft Build, Ignite, large-scale internal marketing summits, and third-party conventions around the world.
And the way she’s embedded sustainability into that work — through material decisions, supplier partnerships, and a personal standard she’s carried from event to event for years — offers a perspective that anyone in event production can learn from.
From Nonprofit Roots to Microsoft's Biggest Stage
Microsoft’s event production runs as what Angie calls a “great orchestra” of workstreams — creative developing event branding and design, experiences building interactive product demos, digital managing registration, and producers running keynotes and breakout sessions, all kept in sync by an executive producer.
Angie manages the physical build. Everything outside of keynote and breakout production is hers — the suppliers, the logistics, the signage, the lighting, the labor, and the on-site execution that shapes the environment attendees experience from the moment they walk in.
A colleague recently summarized the function by running it through Microsoft Copilot: IPX exists to make an event buildable, operable, and defensible under pressure.
“It takes a village,” Angie says. “Every single workstream needs to communicate. Everything happens in orchestration — because everything is equally important.”
But before Microsoft, before events entirely, Angie was at the YMCA — working in the nonprofit world where creating value beyond the bottom line was the entire point. When she transitioned into event production (drawn, she admits, by the promise of travel), she brought that ethos with her.
And it didn’t take long for the contrast to hit.
“I realized the industry I’m in is actually making an impact — because it is a very wasteful industry,” she says. “The impact I can make is just continuing to offset that and try to reduce that by the decisions I’m making.”
Being from the Pacific Northwest sharpened it further. Born in Tacoma, now based in West Seattle, Angie grew up in a region where the outdoors isn’t abstract — it’s personal. That conviction eventually turned into structure.
Working with her colleague Kendall, an executive producer on the third-party events program, Angie created internal sustainability guidelines — a framework the team now uses to evaluate materials, suppliers, and design decisions across productions.
Microsoft’s company-wide commitment to sustainability runs deep — across campuses, data centers, and technology — and Angie saw an opportunity to carry that same ambition into how the company shows up at its events.
“And now my friends and coworkers make fun of me,” she adds, “because I always bring my water bottles on site and my coffee mugs. Just little things like that.”
The little things add up. So do the big ones.
Reuse Is the Strategy. Everything Else Is Secondary.
Ask Angie what the most impactful sustainability decision an event team can make, and there’s no hesitation.
Reuse — designing event properties, structures, and materials to have multiple lives from the very beginning.
Her team evaluates every physical element not just for a single event, but for how many times it can be rebranded, reconfigured, and redeployed before reaching end of life. It sounds straightforward, but in practice it demands a different kind of design thinking — one that plans for the full lifecycle before a single build sheet goes out.
And reuse introduces its own calculus. Trucking isn’t free, and it isn’t carbon-neutral. Does it make more sense to store a structure and ship it across the country for the next event? Or source locally and avoid the freight footprint entirely?
“That’s something we always factor into our designs,” Angie says. “What’s the best solution for the attendee, for the event, for the design, for the business? It’s always in our thought process.”
When new materials are necessary, the team pushes for recyclable substrates and works with suppliers who build sustainability into their own operations. SuperGraphics — with its EcoFormat® recycling program, PVC-free material options, and commitment to zero landfill waste — is one of those partners.
“SuperGraphics is a great example of a partner that aligns really consistently with sustainability,” Angie says. “We just keep partnering with suppliers that are aligned really well.”
It’s a deliberate approach: build a supplier ecosystem where sustainability is a shared value, not a special request.
Sustainable Can Cost More. That's Not the End of the Conversation.
For Microsoft’s third-party convention program, Angie’s team replaced traditional rented stools at demo stations with collapsible cardboard stools. Reusable three to four times if you take care of them — break them down, build them back up. Fully recyclable.
And — it’s not exactly luxury seating.
“They’re not the sexiest furniture you’ve ever seen,” Angie says, laughing. “But it’s clear what our priority is.”
Not everyone was a fan. Some people didn’t love the aesthetic. Coffee got spilled. The stools got beat up over the course of long convention shifts.
But that visibility is part of the value. Sustainable choices don’t always look like their conventional counterparts. Sometimes the imperfection is what makes the commitment real — a signal to everyone on the show floor that the team behind this event weighed aesthetics against impact and chose impact.
What One Convention Floor in Germany Should Make Us Rethink
When asked what inspires her, Angie doesn’t point to a sustainability report. She points to a convention floor in Hannover, Germany.
At Hannover Messe — one of the largest industrial trade events in the world — organizers don’t roll out fresh carpet for every show. They use reusable floor tiles, roughly 24×24 inches, laid down to create aisle pathways. The tiles don’t form perfect lines. Cement peeks through between the booths.
And nobody complains.
“I take a picture every time I go,” Angie says. “They’ve probably been using those tiles for decades. Nobody complains. And I’m like — we should be doing this.”
It’s a small detail that reveals a much bigger opportunity for the events industry. Floor coverings. Signage substrates. Furniture. Fixtures. The amount of material that gets treated as disposable after a single event is staggering — and so much of it could be designed for reuse from the start, if the willingness existed to prioritize function over flawlessness.
Angie sees that willingness growing in Europe. In the U.S., it’s catching up. But every event team that makes the choice to reuse over replace pushes the whole industry’s standard forward.
The Counterintuitive First Step to Sustainable Events
For event professionals just beginning to incorporate sustainability — smaller teams, tighter budgets, no dedicated resources — Angie’s guidance is grounded in experience.
Rent first. Recycle what you can. Learn what works. Then invest.
“Unless you know your full multi-year plan and it’s pretty locked, don’t commit to anything thinking you’re going to be sustainable,” she says. “There’s so much growth and change as you get to know your events. If you commit too early, you’re actually wasteful — because you’re probably going to dispose and change.”
It’s counterintuitive. The instinct when you start caring about sustainability is to buy into reusable properties immediately. But if your event strategy is still evolving, those early investments often end up getting discarded anyway — which defeats the purpose entirely.
Start with rentals. Build recyclable materials into your specs. Work with suppliers who can manage responsible end-of-life for what you produce. Get to know your program. Then commit to reusable, rebrandable properties that will actually get the multiple lives they’re designed for.
It works for a regional trade show team just as well as it works at Microsoft’s scale.
One Person, Every Event, a Little Less Waste
The events industry builds big, moves fast, and tears down quickly. That cycle isn’t going to change.
But what goes into it — and what comes out of it — absolutely can.
Angie Hopkins has spent years proving that at Microsoft’s largest events. Through recyclable materials and reusable structures. Through supplier partnerships built on shared values. Through cardboard stools that aren’t glamorous but get the job done three or four times over. Through internal guidelines she built herself because she believed the work was worth doing.
And through the simple, persistent belief that every event is a chance to generate a little less waste than the one before.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she says. “You just have to have people that care. And that’s where we have to start.”
Your Sustainability Commitment Doesn't End When the Event Starts.
Leaders like Angie are proof that sustainable event production isn’t aspirational — it’s operational. And it starts with the partners you choose to build with.
From PVC-free materials to our EcoFormat® circular recycling process, we help event teams bring their sustainability commitments to life across every printed surface. Because if your event carries your brand’s name, it should carry your brand’s values too.
Curious how SuperGraphics can support sustainable production for your next event?
