Decommissioned Billboard Vinyls Being Repurposed As Roof Tarps For Hurricane-Damaged Homes

October 11, 2024 by Dave Haynes

This is not digital signage, but involves a nice program that works with a lot of outdoor media companies that increasingly use digital displays for posters and billboards …

If a big billboard on a highway or the side of a building is analog, it is probably vinyl – and when the ad campaigns are over, the media company operators take down very large swatches of decommissioned, heavy-duty printed vinyl. A U.S. non-profit called Every Shelter works to provide some sort of shelter for refugees and for displaced people, like those whose homes were washed away or torn up by the recent hurricanes in the US southeast.

The organization’s Emergency Tarp program repurposes the durable vinyl as roof tarps for disaster survivors who may still be able to live in their dwellings, but only if a damaged roof keeps the elements out. The organization, presumably volunteers, takes donated billboard vinyls, folds them in half, and then sews them with the old ad facing inside – so a distressed homeowner doesn’t have a giant photo of an injury accident lawyer on their roof.

The biggest billboard operator in the US,  Lousiana-based Lamar Advertising, has its own program, called the Tarp Team, which has been activated because of the hellacious storms that hot Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee recently.

The Tarp Team donates and distributes used billboard vinyl to communities hit by severe storms for use as temporary roof coverings, with the tarps ranging in size from 200 to 700 square feet.

There are companies that re-market old vinyl billboards as tarps for shelter and just as big tarps for things like covering piles of landscaping material, so good on those media companies who donate their product to help others.