Drive down any freeway through any major city and the landscape will be lined with billboard after billboard.
Messages are displayed on these mammoth outdoor advertising wonders for items and services ranging from God talking to followers to romantic proposals to political candidates asking for votes.
Outdoor advertising is $6.9 billion business in the United States alone according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).
Taking away the visual pollutant aspect; billboards are getting greener and more eco friendly. New technologies are in the works to:
- Print billboards using recyclable materials
- Installing solar panels on top
- Find ways to use wind turbines to display company logos.
Recyclable Billboard Materials
More and more billboard messages are being printed on a recyclable material called Eco-Flexx™. The material is a woven polyethylene and is considered to be cutting edge green technology. According to the company’s web site, the new billboard material is 100 percent recyclable.
The Exo-Flexx™ material is lighter in weight than the traditional PVC and polyester fiber core and is also non-toxic so that it can be melted down and recycled for a variety of other products.
Solar Panels on Billboards
Last year, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) installed the first solar powered billboard in San Francisco, California. They attached twenty solar panels to the top of a standard billboard. The panels generated enough power to light the billboard at night and then some.
The additional power generated from the solar panels was fed back into PG&E’s power grid. PG&E have also installed solar powered billboards in Canada and South Africa.
Wind Turbines for Billboards
Windadvertising™, from WePOWER, LLC, is another technology being developed for outdoor advertising. Companies pay to have their logos printed on the blades of vertical windmills. According to some estimates, if the approximately 500,000 billboards in use today would convert to wind power, Windadvertising could generate enough energy to power 1.5 million homes.
OAAA Tracks Trends
The trend towards more environmentally friendly billboards is supported by the OAAA. Jeff Golimowski, Communications Director for the OAAA said, “More than 65 percent of the industry has converted to single sheet posters. OAAA believes the current trend toward the use of recyclable materials on billboards will continue as more companies choose to convert.”
Other Eco Friendly Measures
Other eco friendly efforts for outdoor advertising include more energy efficient lighting using LED lights and advertising on solar panels installed on buildings.
Outdoor advertising’s long life is testimony to the medium’s effectiveness. Finding ways to reduce its environmental footprint will help make advertisers feel greener and more environmentally friendly when deciding to use outdoor advertising.
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