If campaign signs in my neighborhood tell any story, it's that Obama supporters also support the environment 
and labor unions , while McCain-Palin's remain mum on both subjects. But what's that clean-air-loving Democrat to do come Wednesday, when the only certainty is that we'll have a lot more trash as campaign paraphernalia gets kicked--and bagged and dragged--to the curb?
Those three little arrows that chase each other indicate that the plastic yard sign they adorn is either recyclable or contains recycled materials, or both. 
In short, the symbol lacks a single, official definition. I tracked down the Democrats' manufacturers through their unions, but none of them returned my calls. I did at least confirm from the unions that those Democratic signs are, in fact, union-made in the central and northeastern USA. 
(Some McCain suppliers say their baubles are made in the USA, while others do not specify, and none made union involvement obvious.)
But where are those political signs going? Likely underground. Although Virginians recycled about 38 percent of solid waste in 2006 (2007 numbers are due soon), Charlottesville City and the surrounding Albemarle County, like many places, accept only plastics 1 and 2, which these signs seem not to be. Hence, these signs will join roughly 19 million tons of solid waste in the commonwealth headed to landfills or 2.5 million tons headed to incinerators--and thus into your atmosphere as greenhouse and other gases or back into a landfill as ash.
However, we can look on the bright side. Those signs are typically polyethylene, the same material as the trash bag in your kitchen or dumpster. Hence, campaign signs are a mere pittance beside the usual weekly toll. Only about 1 in 7 houses around me sport campaign yard signs (versus all that sport curb-side trash containers). If that ratio held for the entire commonwealth with its 2.7 million households, only 400,000 signs are going into the trash tomorrow, a number which is slightly less than this year's newly registered Virginia voters. In contrast, 5.4 million plastic bags--more than the total voters in the state--will get dumped if each household made just one double-bagged purchase this week. (Virginia has only about 2.5 percent of the entire US population.)
If you consider the plastic, each yard sign weighs about as much as 20 paperclips; the metal rails probably add another 80 paperclips. All in all, Virginia's tossing out only 30 additional tons of trash when it votes today.