news-record.com

Fairway Outdoor Advertising of the Triad has introduced what it calls ecofriendly billboards.

The new signs don’t use old-fashioned paper or paste. Rather, they’re made of a lightweight material called polyethylene that can be recycled into products such as tote bags and railroad ties.

“It was like hanging wallpaper,” Vance Lynch, a Fairway foreman, said of the old process. “(Now), it’s pretty much like (hanging) a curtain.”

In the past, the paper billboards wound up in the trash. The company could not say how its waste contractor disposed of the material.

To date, Fairway has converted about 90 percent of its smaller billboards, called posters, to the new technology.

The changeover began last year but wasn’t announced until late last month.

“We wanted to make sure this product was going to do what we wanted it to do,” said Dan O’Shea, general manager of Fairway’s area office, which covers the Triad and southern Virginia. “We wanted to make sure we were far enough along in the process that we were comfortable in saying, 'This is where we are going.’”

About half of the company’s larger billboards, called bulletins, have been converted to the recyclable material.

Those boards, which measure 10 1/2 feet by 36 feet, had used a heavier, polyvinyl material.

O’Shea said the new technology makes putting up an advertisement much easier on the company’s employees.

The poster boards, which measure 10 1/2 feet by 22 feet, now use one sheet of material, which weighs 3 pounds, as opposed to eight or 10 sheets covered with paste, which can weigh a collective 40 to 45 pounds.

Workers also don’t need to lug buckets, brushes or ladders up to the platform where they work. The new posters clip to a cable system, which allows them to be raised and lowered.

“It is meant to go up easy and come down easy,” O’Shea said “It allows us to streamline our business.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com