Is Your Corporate Signage Environmentally Sound?

Each year in April, Earth Day gets a lot of attention. But when the activities are over, it’s easy to forget about our intentions to reduce our businesses’ impact on our environment. For years, Metro Sign & Awning has worked with its clients to create high-impact signage while minimizing its impact on the earth and maximizing our customers’ return on investment. (In fact, we wrote a whole white paper about it; take a look – it’s free!)

Below, we share three of the guiding principles we follow, on Earth Day and every day.

1. Materials Matter

Plastic is the new wood! It’s something we’ve been telling our clients for a long time. We’ve gone to historical committee and zoning board meetings on behalf of our clients to explain – and win approval for their signs – that plastic can be a great friend of the environment. Plastic is often made of other recycled material, and lasts longer than wood. Skillful fabricators can turn a piece of high-density urethane (HDU) into a sign that looks like rare or weathered wood. Using plastic means sparing a tree (or two, or three) – and it lasts a lot longer.

Using salvaged metals and other unusual materials to create unique and environmentally conscious signs is a challenge we welcome, and a direct we sometimes even suggest, to our clients.

2. LED Lighting Saves Energy, and Money

Light-emitting diode (LED) technology was good 20 years ago, and it’s even better now – in more ways than one.

The incredibly efficient bulbs can be used in an ever-expanding list of applications, and advances in color-matching means no matter its hue, your logo can look great in lights – for less money than ever before.

Recently, we’ve been working with clients to get low- or no-interest financing when retrofitting existing signs with LED lights.

Want to learn how to reduce the cost of retrofitting your sign? Contact us.

3. Old is the New New

There are dozens of reasons to refurbish an old sign rather than completely replacing a sign. Cost is one, of course, and avoiding the whole “new” sign permitting process is another. But environmental impact is an important consideration to many businesses. And, let’s be honest, sometimes a business owner’s ecological ideals are influenced by customers who want to feel good about frequenting “green” businesses.

Whatever your reason for refurbishing a commercial sign, it’s still a big undertaking. When it comes to making an old sign look better-than-new again, Metro has considerable experience. For example, take a look at the restaurant sign we refurbished for Papagallos in Keene, NH.

Want to learn more about these and other ways you can ensure your business signage is good for business, and good for the environment? Contact us.