What happens to a billboard after it’s taken down?

A billboard’s life usually ends the moment its message stops being relevant. The faces fade, the offers expire, and the tarpaulin sheet is pulled down. But have you wondered what happens in its afterlife? Because the story doesn’t end there. 

The material, which is non-recyclable and non-biodegradable, lives on for decades. In most Indian cities, the larger-than-life flex banners and vinyl sheets are bundled up and carted away, often to landfills, sometimes to scrap yards, and occasionally to the corner of a godown where they gather dust.

A single 20x10 ft. billboard uses over 200 square feet of PVC flex. Multiply that by thousands of hoardings that go up for just a few weeks during the festive season, and you’re looking at tonnes of non-recyclable waste piling up annually. The combination of materials, solvent-based inks, and repeated reprinting generates significant landfill waste.

In Bengaluru, activists have flagged how discarded flex sheets clog stormwater drains, leading to the Karnataka High Court imposing a blanket ban on flexes in 2018. While the court issued further strict directives a while ago, including warnings of FIRs and hefty fines for violators, these measures have not stopped the practice. Across India, heaps of torn billboards resurface at garbage dumping grounds after the monsoon and festive season.

It is not uncommon to stumble upon a dismantled billboard after a political parade has ended. Yesterday, near a busy, traffic-heavy signal in Andheri, I stepped on a discarded OOH poster along with other plastic waste.

Let’s start at the beginning. What happens to a billboard after a campaign ends? 

According to Junaid Shaikh, MD, RoshanSpace Brandcom, conventional OOH billboards, particularly those made of PVC flex, are taken down, with the sheets rolled, folded, and either kept or sent back to advertisers.

“In India, since flex is often a heavy, non-recyclable substance, a large portion of it is reused for basic applications such as tarpaulin sheets, covers for trucks/tempos, or protection against rain in agriculture. In areas where collection systems are inadequate, flex frequently becomes landfill waste or is burned, both of which have serious environmental consequences because of the harmful properties of PVC. The deck states that globally, under 1% of PVC flex is recycled, and India is in the same situation,” adds Shaikh. 

He says that in many instances, the disassembly is performed by contractors or organisations that either send the flex back to the client or informally repurpose it.

The immortality of flex

Due to the cost-effectiveness, weather resistance and durability of this material, the environment is paying a hefty cost. Reports indicate that the average cycle of a billboard used for marketing and advertising purposes is 45 days.  

The OOH industry also lacks a formal recycling ecosystem, and PVC is the commonly used material. In the EU, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obliges companies to take back and recycle materials, a mandate that India’s OOH sector does not yet have.

“India currently lacks a standardised nationwide system for the dismantling and recycling of hoarding materials,” Shaikh continues. “PVC flex remains the leading choice in static OOH because of its affordability and accessibility, yet it has an extremely low recycling rate (<1%). Although there are some organised collection systems in place — such as KDS, which established 60 collection centres in India for recyclable PE material — these are more the exception than the norm.”

While municipal bodies such as Mumbai’s BMC impose tougher regulations on asset upkeep and removal, their priorities are largely safety and visual appeal, not sustainability.

Shadab Khan, Senior Director – Trading, Posterscope India, also highlights the challenges: “The biggest hurdles in making OOH more sustainable lie in three key areas: fragmented regulations, high cost of eco-friendly materials, and lack of infrastructure.”

On the other hand, Nipun Arora, Co-founder, OSMO highlighted that there are gradual improvements underway.

“Earlier, demounted flex from OOH campaigns would often end up in landfills, adding to the waste burden. Over the past few years, however, flex materials have become nearly 20% recyclable, contributing to a more circular lifecycle,” says Arora.

Yet, some industry leaders argue that the sector has sustained itself over decades despite these challenges. Mukesh Gupta, CMD, Graphisads Limited, says, “Sustainability is often debated in the OOH industry, but in reality, it has never been a major issue. The industry has been running successfully for over a century. Occasionally, operations are disrupted by court interventions or NGO activism, usually triggered by accidents, but business continuity remains strong.”

Good for the planet, good for business

With more PVC alternatives available, upcycling has emerged as a win-win solution to reuse billboard sheets.

Khan says, “The industry is moving towards using eco-friendly practices as per the local authority’s regulations. many media owners are trying out greener options like fabric and polyethylene (PE).”

However, its adoption remains optional.

Khan cited Karnataka and Kerala as torchbearer states that have taken the initiative to switch from flex to cloth fabric.

“In 2023, we did a collaborative campaign with DBS Bank where we repurposed billboard flex into school bags for underprivileged kids as a CSR initiative,” Khan tells us, sharing a real-life example.  

Cities such as Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, and Kochi have launched campaigns focusing on recyclable PE. 

Arora believes municipal bodies could accelerate this transition by linking sustainability to economics. “Looking ahead, municipal corporations at the grassroot level could play a pivotal role by introducing a carbon credit–linked policy. Such a system could incentivise recycling by awarding credits for sustainable disposal and reuse of flex, media owners could then use to offset their license fees. This would create a direct economic benefit for sustainable practices, accelerating the industry’s transition towards greener OOH.”

“Brands are also starting to inquire about environmental credentials during their pitch assessments,” says Shaikh. 

Baby steps out of home

The path for India's OOH industry to become more sustainable requires a collective, multi-pronged effort across materials, energy, and industry practices, driven by all stakeholders — media owners, brands, agencies, and the government.

Yet, despite the need for collective action, the industry faces entrenched obstacles that make sustainability a complex goal.

Khan points out, “The biggest hurdles in making OOH more sustainable lie in three key areas: fragmented regulations — with every state following its own infrastructure norms and format standards, there’s no uniform system to streamline sustainable practices; high costs of eco-friendly materials, which often come at a premium; and limited infrastructure for recycling.”

Shaikh adds that these challenges are both systemic and behavioural. “Cost sensitivity, insufficient infrastructure, dispersed accountability among stakeholders, inconsistent policies across states, and cultural inertia due to OOH's historical reliance on PVC flex all contribute to the slow adoption of sustainable practices.”

The experts agree on the need for innovation. “The industry can reduce waste by adopting eco-friendly materials like cloth, fabric, or recyclable PE, and scaling Digital OOH (DOOH) to cut printing waste while enabling dynamic, long-lasting campaigns,” says Khan.

Sustainability in OOH is increasingly about more than just materials. “Earlier, billboards dominated the OOH landscape. Over time, street furniture such as bus shelters, public utilities, and other formats have grown to nearly 30% of the outdoor media share. These are often more economical and practical compared to traditional billboards,” says Gupta of Graphisads.

Last year, Publicis OOH India launched the FlexForward initiative to tackle billboard waste. In collaboration with NGOs like Goonj, the program collects post-campaign flex materials and repurposes them into items such as rain tarps, tote bags, and utility pouches, which are then distributed to communities in need. The initiative has already diverted over 12 lakh sq. ft. of flex from landfills.

Shaikh emphasises that broader industry-wide innovations are needed to make OOH sustainability systemic. He suggests policies should go beyond penalties to include R&D and investment incentives, such as tax support for recyclable materials and preferential treatment in government contracts for eco-certified media. He also highlights the need to fund infrastructure for collection and recycling, and to encourage companies to incorporate sustainability information in their campaigns, similar to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks.

Internally, Shaikh recommends several steps to harmonise impact with sustainability:

• Transition from PVC to recyclable PE materials certified by SGS/GRS.
  

• Implement circular collection initiatives with buy-back or exchange systems to transform outdated media into CSR items like bags, tiles, and furniture.
  

• Adopt modular asset designs—panels that can be exchanged without replacing the entire skin, conserving materials.

• Scale digital adoption by moving high-turnover creative to DOOH, where content updates digitally, minimising print waste.

• Explore creative repurposing of deconstructed media in community initiatives to foster positive brand stories.

While structural and behavioural hurdles remain, efforts by media owners, agencies, and initiatives like FlexForward show that change is possible. With eco-friendly materials, digital adoption, modular designs, and community-focused repurposing, the sector is gradually moving toward campaigns that leave an impact without leaving behind waste. The path ahead will require coordinated action, innovation, and consistent implementation, signalling that sustainability in OOH is no longer just a debate, but an actively pursued direction.