You Burn It, You Buy It

Every wildfire season seems to get worse, yet a lot of people still treat careless fire behaviour like it’s no big deal because they never actually see the consequences. To make the impact impossible to ignore, the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC launched the “You Burn It, You Buy It” campaign by hanging giant price tags on trees in popular recreation areas, with some displaying costs as high as $1 million to show the real financial damage caused by human-started wildfires. Instead of another generic warning sign, the campaign reframed forests like expensive merchandise by borrowing the familiar phrase “you break it, you buy it,” turning wildfire prevention into something immediate, personal and easy to understand: if you destroy the forest, you pay for it.