Video: Sheikh Zayed billboard to help Dubai's autistic kids

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Video: Sheikh Zayed billboard to help Dubais autistic kids

Dubai - When the billboard comes down on October 25, it won't be thrown away as a plastic waste.

by

Nilanjana Gupta

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Published: Wed 10 Oct 2018, 12:00 AM

Last updated: Thu 11 Oct 2018, 8:56 AM

If you're driving along Sheikh Zayed road towards Sharjah near Nakheel Metro station, you will notice an interesting billboard on the right with images of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. But the billboard tells you that it's not just a billboard. 
The beauty about it is when it comes down on October 25, it won't be thrown away as a plastic waste. It will be flown to a factory in Italy that will create 200 high-end bags from the material of the billboard. The bags will be sold in December at a price of Dh1,000 each and the proceeds from the sale will be go to three special needs schools in the UAE - Al Noor Training Centre for Children with Special Needs, Dubai Autism Center and Senses Dubai. 
"2018 is the Year of Zayed and we wanted to celebrate it in a very meaningful way. So we created this 'Year of Zayed' billboard. The collage of pictures is the work of thousands of students from the UAE who participated in our annual environmental artwork competition. The images are inspired from the founding father and the environment of the UAE, including the desert and palm trees. The winning entries were brought together and we made a collage to promote sustainability," said Habiba Al Marashi, the Chairperson of the Emirates Environmental Group. 
"The board will be playing an effective role to incorporate and bring the special needs students to the mainstream society. That's why the message is #notjustabillboard. We believe there's nothing called waste until you waste it. We encourage all the companies producing billboards to not throw them after use. Instead, they should contact the Emirates Environmental Group, and we can build beautiful products that can find their way back into the society," she added. 
Emirates Environmental Group partnered with Footprint Outdoor Advertising and Etuix to create the billboard that was installed on October 2. 
Kashif Merchant, Managing Partner at Footprint Outdoor Advertising, the firm that monitored the installation, said, "More than 1 million square metres of PVC are produced every year in Dubai. So this is our way of contributing to the environment."  
"Our third-party vendors who did the printing didn't use any kind of ink that's harmful to the environment. They instead used UV printing technique. So you could say that the printing itself is environment-friendly. The PVC it's printed on is recyclable in every possible way," he added. 
The billboard that stands tall on Sheikh Zayed road is 16m by 18m in size and uses 256 square metres of PVC.
nilanjana@khaleejtimes.com


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