ORLANDO — At Vision Expo 2026, which took place March 11-14 at the Orange County Convention Center, RX introduced Green Step Aisle Carpet, also known as Genesis, the first fully reusable and recyclable exhibition carpet used at a major U.S. trade show. This milestone was accomplished through an intensive collaboration with Freeman and Emerald Carpets.
Trade Show Executive (TSE) examined this sustainability victory from start to finish.
Inspiration
RX tracks their waste by show and is always looking for opportunities to divert and reduce.
“When in use, carpet is a leading driver of measurable waste numbers across our US portfolio,” Mike Grant, Senior Vice President of Operations at RX, explained. “The cleanest alternative has certainly been to reduce or eliminate carpet but that is not always a realistic option. While there are numerous reasons for the continued use of carpet (from comfort to aesthetic to sound suppression), RX is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and understands the impact carpet represents. We’d heard whispers over the last year or two about recyclable carpet options from our partners at Freeman and Emerald Carpets and were keenly interested in these opportunities.”
In 2025, Freeman and Emerald Carpets asked if RX was willing to test Genesis, a new, exciting and sustainable carpet product.
“We have the appetite to experiment at our events,” Helen Sheppard, RX’s Global Sustainability Director, explained. “The Net Zero Carbon Events commitments are really important to us, and we want to champion that industry-wide commitment and encourage more suppliers, organizers and venues to be part of it. Freeman are also signatories, so when this opportunity arose, it felt like, ‘Well, why wouldn’t we try this?’”
Genesis
Emerald Carpets developed Genesis to address one of the biggest sustainability challenges in the events industry: creating a high-performance aisle carpet that supports a circular lifecycle from production through end-of-life.
Genesis can be cleaned, reused and ultimately turned into plastic pellets to create new carpet products.
“Traditionally, aisle carpets contain multiple materials, including fillers and latex backings, which create challenges for end-of-life recycling and limit opportunities for true circularity,” Will Estes, Sustainability Manager at Emerald Carpets, said. “Genesis is different because it is made from a single polymer system utilizing Emerald Carpets’ proprietary ExpoMax™ backing technology. While the product is fully recyclable at end-of-life, it is first designed to maximize reuse, with Genesis typically achieving four to five uses before entering the recycling stream.”
Successful Implementation
RX first piloted this carpet at ISC West 2025, which took place March 31-April 4, 2025, at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
“ISC East and West have been flying the flag for sustainability through some other initiatives that they’re working on, like zero waste initiatives, and that felt like a good place to pilot it,” Sheppard said.
RX placed this carpet in front of the show’s entrance and in some key aisles, providing an important opportunity to evaluate Genesis in the field.
“ISC West served as an important pilot for the program, allowing us to test installation, removal, material recovery and operational logistics in a live event environment,” Elizabeth Fretheim, Vice President of Sustainability at Freeman, said. “Each partner played a critical role. Emerald led product development, Freeman managed installation, removal [and] material recovery, and provided real-world performance feedback, while RX enabled testing at scale in an active event environment. The product was validated under actual show conditions, including forklift traffic, high attendee volumes and compressed move-in and move-out schedules.”
The organizations also saw meaningful operational benefits: The lighter-weight material helped reduce handling strain during installation and dismantle, which is an important consideration due to the physical demands and fast timelines of event production.
“Perhaps most importantly, the project showed that environmental improvements do not have to come at the expense of performance, safety or the attendee experience,” Fretheim added.
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Victory at Vision Expo
The trial’s success inspired RX to use the carpet in the aisles of Vision Expo 2026.
This went well and proved to the industry that circular flooring solutions can work within the realities of large-scale events.
“This is exciting because it represents a meaningful step forward for sustainability in the events industry,” Estes said. “Event flooring has historically been viewed as a largely disposable product category, and Genesis challenges that assumption. By creating a fully recyclable aisle carpet that is lighter, easier to transport and designed for circularity, we are helping event organizers, venues and exhibitors reduce waste while improving operational efficiency. It demonstrates that innovative product design can create practical solutions that benefit both the industry and the environment.”
An Impactful Partnership and a Bright Future
Fretheim explained that this success proves the importance of partnership and patience.
“Advancing sustainability at scale requires alignment across manufacturers, organizers, service providers and venues,” Fretheim said. “No single company can create change alone. We also learned that successful circular solutions require planning beyond the product itself. Material selection matters, but so do collection systems, recovery pathways, logistics and stakeholder education. Piloting the program allowed us to validate those processes and identify opportunities for continuous improvement as the initiative grows.
“We believe Green Step represents an important shift in how the industry thinks about flooring. A few years ago, the most sustainable recommendation was often to eliminate aisle carpet entirely. Today, we have the opportunity to rethink the product itself through a circular model.
“As inventory grows, future carpet production can increasingly utilize recycled pellets created from recovered material, reducing the need for virgin resources. This creates a system where materials stay in use longer and can ultimately be transformed into new products rather than becoming waste. We expect to see broader adoption of circular flooring solutions across additional events, and we hope this project serves as a model for rethinking other high-volume materials used throughout the events industry.”
Estes sees Genesis playing an important role in the future of sustainable event flooring.
“As more organizations establish sustainability goals and seek measurable ways to reduce waste, products designed to remain in circulation for as long as possible through reuse and ultimately be recycled at end-of-life, will become increasingly important,” Estes said. “Our goal is to continue expanding the adoption of Genesis while further advancing material recovery and closed-loop solutions.
“We believe the future of event flooring lies in products that are designed with their entire lifecycle in mind, and Genesis is an important step in that direction … We are proud of what Genesis represents, but we are equally excited about what it demonstrates for the future of the events industry: that sustainability and performance can work hand in hand to create better outcomes for our customers and the environment.”
RX plans to scale this solution up to the point of using it exclusively in the U.S.
“Our only limitation is production and volume right now,” Grant said. “We engage our Freeman partners before each show when talking about carpet orders and the floorplan, and that includes a discussion as to where the opportunity is and how much recycled product can we put on the show floor.”
“What’s important is that recycling is only part of the story,” Sheppard said. “Emerald Carpets already do a wonderful job of making sure the carpet is reused, we saw first-hand how it is cleaned and repaired so it can be used again. So yes, the recycling element is a fantastic innovation, but that comes at the end of the carpet’s life. Before we even get to that point, the carpet is being reused.”
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