Challenge
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. What do we do with all those old banners?
Solution
Rather than sending them to the landfill we came up with a very green idea — transform them into reusable nylon shopping bags! Not a bad start, but how much farther could we take this initiative. Why not use the proceeds from their sale to create new public green spaces in the neighbourhood?
We discussed the possibility of remanufacturing them with Bei Linda Tang, owner of Dream Designs — a clothing and housewares retailer on Commercial Drive. She was very excited about the idea. In her words, "We are pleased to contribute to this fabulous community initiative by designing and manufacturing these shopping bags on a cost recovery basis. Each of them is a unique embodiment of the Commercial Drive history that we are proud to be part of."
Commercial Drive retailers were asked if they would be willing to donate all proceeds towards greening the neighbourhood. The response was amazing! Our only concern was supplying them each with adequate inventory! We now have a revenue stream in place to develop new public green spaces in the neighbourhood.
Result
We researched the embodied energy in nylon fabric and calculated the reduction in environmental impacts. By converting 2 years worth of old banners rather than using new nylon fabric, this neighbourhood has:
- avoided 3.53 tons of CO2 emissions
- avoided sending 128 kg 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
For more information and a complete list of Commercial Drive retailers visit: http://www.thedrive.ca/bags.shtm |
