Signage is a major component of any brick & mortar business structure and it normally can’t be avoided, at least not if you want to boost your marketing and promotion efforts to their maximum. That said, while practically necessary, your signage doesn’t have to be costly, or environmentally unfriendly if you don’t want it to be. And by making it both green friendly and as low cost as possible, you can guarantee that you at least don’t contribute to pointless waste while at the same time promoting your business and brand effectively.

Let’s go over some tips on incorporating green signage practices into your company’s marketing and advertising.

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Be Aware of your Lit Sign Alternatives

As a basic starting point in terms of maintaining green signage, you can begin with picking out low light signs that don’t flood your audience’s eyes with high intensity electrical lighting while draining your power use.

This can mean all sorts of alternatives that depend on bright colors, clever design and other eye-catching features in place of sheer electrically generated brilliance. And, in cases where you have to use lit signs so that they can be visible in dark spaces or at night, there are still energy saving choices like LEDs and high efficiency fluorescent bulbs available instead of older sign lighting.

Go for Chalkboard Signs

This is one particularly clever tactic that will not only save you a fortune on electrical costs but also keep you from wasting materials: artistically crafted chalkboard signs. Instead of spending plastic, metal and other materials on flashy but unchangeable manufactured signage, invest in some large, or even small chalkboard display panels onto which you can paint any sort of logo or advertising you like. You might have to hire a professional painter to really make these signs look good but the fact that they can be endlessly reused is going to still wind up saving you money while also protecting the environment.

You might also need to keep an eye out for outdoor placement options, since chalk signs obviously can’t be exposed to the rain. Some clever examples (and remember, you can really scale up from some of these with little extra cost) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173990/Hilarious-chalkboard-signs-offer-bacon-booze-breakfasts-consisting-aspirin-lure-passersby-street.html

Graffiti Signage

Not all signage has to involve large billboards, electronic displays and vast plastic posters. Another option is stylish graffiti-like works of advertising art that cover large publically visible spaces near your business.

Obviously, you’re not going to hire a graffiti artist to paint over others private property or public spaces –since this would be fairly illegal vandalism—but what you can do is hunt down a rentable open space such as the side of a building or even some other flat, vertical or mobile space that can be painted over. Having found these, make an offer to the owners. Any signage your create through artistic graffiti will not only last a long time with no additional maintenance costs, it will also really draw attention thanks to its rarity. Here are some great examples of what we’re talking about: http://www.businessinsider.com/graffiti-mural-guerrilla-advertising-2011-10?op=1

Buy from Providers who Use Recycles Products

Finally, we move onto one last green signage tactic that can give you a helping hand even when you’re forced to buy regular, materials heavy signage for your business; work exclusively with providers whose sign products are made from as many recycled materials as possible.

While many  commercial signage producers simply buy their materials from wherever the lowest possible price is available, there are some whose plastics, metals and acrylics are sourced from recycled material as much as reasonably possible. By using these producers, you’ll be creating a smaller carbon footprint and contributing to much less raw production resource use per sign.

Here is an excellent example of one such producer (scroll down to materials recycling percentages list):  http://www.impactsigns.com/green-signs/