These Absorbent Billboards Can Reduce Air Pollution

Hot on the heels of Toyota's Eco-Billboards in the U.S. comes another air-cleaning outdoor innovation from Europe.

Italian outdoor media company Urban Vision has developed the system, named Ad/Sorbent. It wraps billboards in a fabric, called The Breath, that captures and then absorbs air pollution from traffic.

The Breath is owned by technology company Anemotech and it was originally created mainly for indoor use, but Urban Vision tested it outdoors for one month in October 2016 and analyzed the results. It followed up the test with a series of billboards in Rome, Milan and London highlighting the technology in a campaign by Ogilvy Italy. The wording on the ads claims that the boards don't sell cars, but make thousands of them "disappear" (using figures extracted from the test). The campaign started in February, and is currently still running in London's Leicester Square.

Urban Vision has committed to replace all its wrapping with The Breath, by 2018.