Commercial Drive's old street banners get second life as reusable shopping bags!

Almost every year the Commercial Drive Business Society prints 256 32" x 60" nylon street banners which help create a festive, colourful atmosphere for this unique shopping neighbourhood. Eventually each edition of these unique designs must be retired, so rather than sending them to the landfill they've come up with a very green idea — transform them into reusable nylon shopping bags! By converting 2 years worth of old banners rather than using new nylon fabric, this neighbourhood has:

• avoided 7,059 pounds or 3.53 tons of CO2 emissions
• avoided sending 128 kg (281.6 lb) of nylon to the landfill
• saved 25,456,640 BTUs of energy – enough to provide electricity to an average Vancouver home for over 10 months
• freed up 543 trees to capture and store CO2 from other sources for a full year

"This green initiative even goes one step further", explains Ian McSorley, marketing chair for Commercial Drive. "Proceeds from the sale of these shopping bags will be donated to the development of new green spaces in the neighbourhood."

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