EdFringe Recycled Publicity

I have already had my say on a few random aspects of the Edinburgh Fringe and also, of course, put up a number of reviews on UKTW – now it is over, I just wanted to make an observation on one aspect of the publicity.

Walking around the great city of Edinburgh I was aware of what seemed like miles of posters on hoardings, barriers, walls and pretty well anything that would hold them. There are also posters on boards around vast numbers of trees, lamp posts and road signs. It has always been so, but I noticied something this year – the majority of these were printed on foam board rather than paper. All those boards around lamp posts, for example, were on pre-printed foam sheets, not fly posted paper posters.

I realise that foam boards are lightweight, self-supporting and weatherproof as well as being fairly cheap to produce but what happens to them at the end of August? It is surely bad enough that the Fringe shows produce vast amounts of paper flyers, leaflets, and programmes in addition to the main EdFringe programme but to produce this mountain of foam-based ephemera surely undermines their laudable attempts to promote green credentials? Anyone walking the streets of the Fringe in August will be aware that (a) they get offered endless amounts of fliers and (b) the bins are full of those fliers!

At least one distribution company says that it recycles all spare materials in its possession at the end of the Fringe but what about all that which has already been put out in the streets? No one seems to own up to that part …

Categories: Personal

Tags: edfringe

My Fringe, 2017 The Peter Brook Awards 2017