Environmental Leader

The billboard industry is making moves to become more energy efficient, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Some 170,000 billboards, nearly all of them made from PVC,  line expressways around the country. There are also 200,000 or more smaller billboards made from thick paper panels. Take into account that neither the PVC or paper billboard materials are practical to recycle or reuse, and you begin to understand the scale of the problem.

CBS Outdoor, the country’s second-largest billboard company, plans to rid PVC from 17,000 of its ad faces by the end of next year.

One solution comes from Circle Graphics, which has spent two years and $8 million developing a product they call Eco-Flexx, made from woven polyethylene. Companies are also trying to replace paper panels with a thin, lighter-weight sheet of material that hangs to a billboard, eliminating the need for glues.

A number of billboard companies are also working to cut the energy needed to illuminate ad messages at night.