Kamloops beekeeper gives election campaign lawn signs a second life

You wouldn't think of municipal election campaign signs as having a half-life, let alone an afterlife, but an inventive beekeeper in Kamloops, B.C., seems to have found a way for them to live on.

Murray Willis, who owns the Valley View Honey farm in eastern Kamloops, says he plans to repurpose 200 lawn signs donated by local politicians as trays for screen bottoms for his 60 bee boxes.

Willis says he uses the trays, which are made of corrugated plastic, to catch mites, and he takes them out from time to time during the summer to give bees more ventilation inside their hives.

He says he came up with the idea of reusing election signs while driving by a number of them several weeks ago.

"I'm always looking for deals or whatever, so this year when I kept driving by the signs … I came up with the [idea] I could probably repurpose them as the bottom boards."

Willis says the repurposed screen bottoms can last six to eight years.

Saving election signs from the landfill

Newly-elected school board trustee Jo Kang says he was surprised when Willis contacted him on social media before election day about recycling his lawn signs.

"People pick them up, and they either get thrown into the landfill, or they're stored away for next time.

"[Willis] said, 'Would you be willing to donate some signs for my farm?' In all honesty, my first answer was yes," Kang said. "I'm a huge guy about recycling and green earth."

Kang, who ran for public office in the recent election for the first time, says he donated about 100 of the 400-plus lawn signs he was using in his campaign because he was doing well enough he didn't think he'd need them.

He says he plans to seek a second term and keep the rest of the signs for the next election.

Bill Sarai, who won another term over the weekend as a Kamloops councillor, says Kang told him about Willis's campaign sign recycling idea. He decided to donate more than 100 of his own signs to the beekeeper.

"I thought it was a great idea. I couldn't have been happier because I was almost struggling to figure out what I was going to do with all these signs."

The re-elected councillor says he reused all the 400 signs he had from the last election in 2018, but after this election will have to toss out about 200 that are worn out.

Sarai says he hopes more election signs will be made with biodegradable materials to minimize their impact on landfills.

Meanwhile, he is asking businesses who may be able to repurpose campaign lawn signs to let him know.

"It's a great initiative to save our landfill."