Billboards are not the most obvious environmental hazard, but with millions of billboards across the US, many of them lit up at night, they contribute a significant sum of carbon emissions – and of course add to the mountains of landfill after what are often short advertising campaigns.

This week, however, America’s first solar powered billboard has launched in San Francisco, and as well as generating enough power to keep it illuminated at night, the billboard is also linked to the grid and feeds energy back into the system. In addition to installing solar panels, the billboard's halophane light fixtures were also replaced with energy-efficient LED lights – making it a far greener billboard.

With the debut of San Francisco’s solar-powered billboard, the United States joins Canada and South Africa as the only countries worldwide to utilize solar technology in this way – but solar billboards are not the only way to make an advert eco-friendly.

The advertising campaign to promote the launch of the eco-friendly Vodka 360 brand, for instance, made use of bio-degradable plastic vinyl for their billboard adverts, and once the campaign had finished, the adverts were transformed into everything from reusable shopping bags to wallets – which once they’re thrown away, will biodegrade in the landfill.

Over in Europe the advertising company JCDecaux has used the environment as an incentive to get control of advertising space. In cities such as Paris they have secured exclusive rights to around 1600 billboards in the city, in exchange for funding the set up and maintenance of the velib bike scheme.

Under the scheme residents and tourists can sign up to make use of one of 10,000 bikes placed at 750 stations across the city. In effect Paris gained a free way to reduce traffic congestion and visitors and residents got the use of free and convenient bikes.
Similar schemes have been successful in cities such as Brussels and Leon – so perhaps now all that’s needed is a combination of all three green initiatives. Where will the first bio-degradable, solar powered, bike funding billboard be launched?