Created by AB Brand and Marketing in Exeter, Devon
Sustainable Marketing Whitepaper
Introduction to Sustainable Marketing
Did you know that every time you visit a website, send an email, use an app or browse social media, a small amount of carbon dioxide is released? The fact is, all marketing and comms activity has an impact on the environment.
And that feels pretty uncomfortable when you work in marketing, right? Everything we do to build brands contributes to climate change.
We believe that as marketing and comms professionals, we have a collective responsibility to reduce our emissions.
If you agree, read on to find out how to cut your carbon emissions at work.
How does digital activity contribute to climate change?
Everything we do online travels through data centres and their servers.
Since 2010, the number of internet users worldwide has more than doubled. Global internet traffic has increased 20-fold.
These data centres consume energy. In fact, data centres and data transmission networks each account for 1 to 1.5% of global electricity use.
In Ireland, the electricity used by data centres has more than tripled since 2015, and accounted for 14% of total electricity consumption in 2021. In Denmark, data centre energy use is predicted to treble by 2025.
All these data centres and transmission networks not only use electricity, they also generate a waste product: heat. A whopping 25% of the total power consumption of a data centre is caused by mechanical cooling.
The demand for data services looks likely to keep growing thanks to new services and technologies,
including plenty used in marketing: Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, streaming and virtual reality.
In just one minute online…
231,400,000 emails are sent
16,000,000 texts are sent
5,900,000 Google searches take place
2,430,000 images are shared on Snapchat
1,700,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook
1,000,000 hours of video are streamed
347,200 posts are sent on X
104,600 hours are spent in Zoom meetings
66,000 photos are shared on Instagram
500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.
Sources: Action Net Zero / IEA / Statista
The case for change: customer demand
Making changes to help the planet is simply the right thing to do. And it’s not just us who feel this way.
Customers want to see brands stepping up to their responsibilities, too.
Consumers want to see action on sustainability from businesses…
91% of people agree companies can help people have a positive impact on the environment through their business operations and manufacturing processes
91% of people want brands to demonstrate they are making positive choices about the planet and environment more explicitly in everything they do
…and specifically, marketing departments:
84% say they would be more likely to buy from a company that practices sustainable advertising
46% of respondents say they look for clear labelling of green credentials on a brand’s advertising to determine if the brand is environmentally friendly
25% of people in the study say they would actively avoid or opt-out of adverts which aren’t produced or delivered sustainably
77% of people globally say in five years’ time, they only want to be spending money with brands who practice green and sustainable advertising.
Source: The Rise of Sustainable Media
What you can do
Okay, now you’ve seen the scale of the problem. But the good news is, there are simple, easy things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. And you can do most of them just sitting at your desk. Sounds good, right?
We’ve pulled together 50 simple ways you can make your work kinder to the planet.
You may find that not all these suggestions are practical or do-able in your circumstances. But with this information, you can evaluate your projects and activities, plus get fresh ideas to make changes that work for you.
50 simple things you can do to make your work greener (and your customers happier)
We wanted to make it a bit more simple for you to jump through the guide to particular sections, so we’ve added links below that will take you direct to the section you’re looking for.
Emails
Every email you send and receive emits carbon.
An email newsletter generates around 10 grams of CO 2 , and 90% are never opened! [Source: Cleanfox]
32 billion trees would have to be planted every year to offset the pollution caused by unopened attachments, unread emails and spam. [Source: Gerry McGovern, Digital is Physical]
Simple things:
1. Only send an email if you genuinely have something useful and relevant to say
2. Review the company culture surrounding emails: e.g. suggest people don’t send quick messages such as “thank you!”. If every adult in the UK sent one less “thank you” email per day, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road or 81,152 flights to Madrid. [Source: Ovo Energy]
3. Use alternative messaging tools such as Slack, which consume less energy
4. Hit unsubscribe to the emails that you no longer have the time or inclination to read
5. Review your recipients – does everyone really need to be copied in?
6. Take steps to avoid email shots going straight into Junk: ensure your email template is set up correctly and test before you send to all
7. Reduce the file size and compress any images or attachments before you send them
8. Don’t send large files on email. Use WeTransfer, Google Drive or OneDrive instead
9. Spellcheck, proofread and check for broken links before you hit send. Poor content is bound to generate unnecessary responses (more carbon!) and then you’ll have to edit and resend the message. This causes twice the harm to the planet
10. Only include your email signature in new emails – switch it off for replies.
Messages
The messaging app with the best carbon impact average is Slack (0.035 gEqCO2) followed closely by Skype (0.043 gEqCO2) then Teams (0.055 gEqCO2).
There’s a difference of 36% between the best and the worst so it pays to select your messaging app carefully, especially if it’s a tool you use every day. [Source: Greenspector]
Simple things:
11. Use Slack as your default messaging app
12. Don’t send GIFs, PDFs and other files over messaging apps – send links to stored files instead.
13. If you use Slack on your phone, close it when you’re not using it. Running the app in the background for a working day of seven hours has the same carbon impact as driving a car 230 metres – that adds up to 50km across a working year. [Source: Greenspector]
Advertising
Our industry can have a big impact on people’s behaviour, as Dr Bill Wescott explained in Ad Net Zero’s annual report:
“While advertising itself only directly accounts for around 2% of the world’s emissions, advertising has an outsized impact on the other 98% – and is therefore responsible for enabling the shift in behaviour change the world so urgently needs.”
Sustainable advertising therefore encompasses both lower-carbon methods and pro-planet messaging.
Simple things:
14. Use low or no-carbon providers for digital advertising
15. Consider recycled or innovative materials for Out of Home (OOH) displays, e.g. recycled paper for posters and carbon-eating paint for murals
16. Measure the real carbon impact of digital media content throughout the lifecycle of a campaign
17. Help people make informed choices by adding the clear labelling that consumers are demanding
18. Demonstrate the personal benefits of sustainability – give people reasons to care
19. Normalise sustainable behaviours and lifestyles in comms. Show people walking, cycling, taking public transport, car-sharing, drinking from reusable coffee cups, taking short showers, keeping the heating low, turning the lights off as they leave a room, recycling, living in homes with heat pumps and solar panels, driving electric cars or similar.
Social media
Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has millions of Instagram followers. Channel 4 Dispatches found that every time he posts an image on Instagram, it uses as much energy as 10 UK households for a year. That’s just for one post, from one celebrity. The mind boggles!
However, social media can also be a powerful behavioural change tool when it comes to promoting sustainable lifestyles. A study by Unilever found that social media is one of the most influential sources for information on sustainability:
78% say social media is most likely to encourage them to act more sustainably, much more so than
TV documentaries (48%), news articles (37%) and government campaigns (20%)
82% were encouraged to act after watching content about food waste reduction from Hellmann’s
76% of people polled were encouraged to act after watching content from Dove about reusing plastics.
Simple things:
20. Use social media as a tool to inform and inspire followers about sustainable living
21. Post content only on appropriate platforms. If you don’t have the resources or the volume of followers to make TikTok/X/YouTube etc worth it, then don’t post. Consider closing redundant or ineffective accounts down
22. Post content according to a content plan and strategy. Every post should be useful or engaging for your followers
23. Unfollow accounts that aren’t useful or valuable (from both your personal and business social media accounts)
24. Consider the value versus the impact of following celebrities or organisations with huge social media audiences
25. Build sustainability considerations and KPIs into any projects you embark on with influencers so that you can measure and mitigate the carbon impact of the partnership.
Build sustainability into your ways of working
Whether you’re a freelancer or part of a big team or company, there are simple things you can do to build sustainability into your project management, ways of working and KPIs.
Every step you take not only reduces your own carbon footprint, but also influences the behaviour of other people and businesses you work with.
Simple things:
26. Make sustainability impact and KPIs part of every communication brief and project evaluation
27. Set environmental objectives as part of appraisal and bonus schemes
28. Ask your suppliers, partners, clients and agencies what they’re doing for the planet
29. Share AB’s greener comms guide.
Reduce the energy consumption of video calls
Video calls and meetings are energy-hungry:
A one-hour video call with two people uses 300MB of data
A one-hour video call using high-definition video uses between 1 and 2GB depending on your screen size
A one-hour audio call with two people (no video) uses around 30MB.
[Source: Gerry McGovern, Digital is Physical]
However, if video conferencing replaces travel to reach meetings, it can be far better for the environment. Video conferencing produces just 7% of the emissions of meeting in person. [Source: BBC]
But with so many people switching to video calls as the default, it’s worth reflecting on whether video is always necessary.
Simple things:
If your meeting has to be done online:
30. Use video at the beginning to say hello, then switch to audio (this emits 90% less pollution than a cameras-on meeting)
31. Keep it as short as possible
32. Invite only essential participants
33. Use the lowest resolution and the smallest screen possible
34. Avoid virtual backgrounds
35. Consider using Zoom rather than Teams, as Zoom is two to three times more energy efficient
36. Choose a video conferencing provider that’s committed to using 100% renewable energy (e.g. Google Meet)
37. Only record the meeting if you have to, and delete any saved videos after three months
38. Switch off video for webinars.
Search sustainably
Every Google search has a carbon footprint:
0.5g CO2e = one simple search
5.6g CO2e = five minutes web browsing from a smartphone
8.2g CO2e = five minutes web browsing from a laptop
According to writer Gerry McGovern, “Google receives 80,000 requests per second or 6.9 billion requests per day. Every day, the Google ‘car’ travels 6.7 million km. That’s 1,325 tons of EqCO2 every day.
“Every year, 483,552 tons of CO2 are caused by us searching Google. You’d need to plant 48 million trees to deal with that sort of pollution.”
Simple things:
39. Switch from Google to Blackle or an eco-responsible search tool: e.g. Lilo which funds social and environmental projects, or Ecosia, which uses searches and ads to fund tree-planting
40. Aim to halve the number of Google searches you do each day. Could you try to solve that query instead? Could you focus on creating the best search query to find the answer you need first time round?
41. If you’re a content creator, ensure your content is easy to find and navigate, so that your audience can reach it as quickly as possible.
Consider the impact of AI
“We’re seeing this shift of people using generative AI models just because they feel like they should, without sustainability being taken into account,” Sasha Luccioni, the climate lead for the AI company Hugging Face, told The Guardian.
There is limited data available on the carbon footprint of AI. Companies that develop them, such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, will not disclose how much energy and electricity it takes to train and run their AI models and data centres. [Source: The Guardian]
However, a single generative AI query is estimated to have a carbon footprint that’s four to five times higher than a search engine query. [Source: Euronews]
AI is also very thirsty. The water footprint of AI models is enormous.
Training GPT-3 at Microsoft’s state-of-the-art US data centres can consume 700,000 litres of freshwater.
ChatGPT needs to “drink” a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20-50 questions and answers, depending on when and where it’s deployed. This is a huge volume of water when you consider that ChatGPT has billions of users. [Source: arxiv.org]
Simple things:
42. Use tools such as ChatGPT and Bard but only when necessary. Use search engines as a more sustainable alternative to AI when possible
43. Research the alternative low-impact, efficient AI approaches and methods if you’re considering building generative AI into an app
Create greener websites
If the Internet was a country, it would be the 4th largest polluter, according to the Sustainable Web Manifesto.
In one year, 2% of all greenhouse gas is produced by our internet usage. That’s the same amount as global air travel over the same period! [Source: Action Net Zero]
It’s therefore vital that we make websites as eco-friendly as possible.
This means not only thinking carefully about the code and files we use, but also about the kinds of content we produce and how we present and manage it.
The key to reducing the carbon emissions of content is to:
Make content as short and impactful as possible
Use as few images or videos as possible
Make it easy for people to find or navigate directly to it.
Digital activity that uses the most energy is music and video streaming. These need vast amounts of data, and the higher the resolution, the more data is sent and received. [Source: Action Net Zero]
For example, 4K video streaming, or Ultra HD, on a phone generates about eight times more in emissions than standard definition. But, on such a small screen, the viewer might not even notice the difference. [Source: BBC]
Simple things:
44. Test, measure and optimise your site structure, navigation and information architecture. Make it easy for people to find information as quickly as possible
45. Choose system fonts where possible to reduce the need to download additional fonts
46. Use networks such as Cloudflare (which we recommend to all our clients for both security and page speed benefits) to make use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and server caching. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded on each website visit
47. Optimise your site for mobile devices. For example, we use a separate optimised theme on our website for mobile devices. It displays static images rather than video. It also uses less code because certain interactive features have been removed to speed up the user journey
48. Ensure your web servers run on 100% renewable energy
49. Make videos useful, informative, short and accessible. Do not create video content that does not have a clear focus, aims and objectives. Use a lower resolution and switch videos from autoplay to play on demand.
Say no to PDFs
PDFs are terrible for the environment, says author and UX guru Gerry McGovern. “So many […] reports are published as diesel-sucking, bloated, pollution-puffing PDFs. Well written HTML is the most environmentally friendly language you can use to publish on the Web.”
A PDF has nine times more impact on the environment than a page of optimised HTML. [Source: Gerry McGovern, Digital is Physical presentation]
They’re also not accessible, hard to update and a nightmare to view on a mobile device.
Say no to PDFs and create optimised web pages instead. If information is worth publishing, it’s worth making it easy to find, read and update.
Simple things:
50. Only create PDFs if essential and keep the file size as small as possible.
Sustainability tools and resources
Need some help to get started on making your marketing more sustainable? Check out these tools and resources designed for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Take advantage of these tools and share them with your network.
Free carbon footprinting tool for small and medium sized enterprises
The DIMPACT tool estimates the emissions associated with video streaming, online banner advertising, digital publishing and audio streaming. It will measure audio streaming and video conferencing soon
Guidance on going Net Zero at work
Uniting the advertising industry to eliminate the negative environmental impacts of production. AdGreen provides a carbon calculator and resources to help production companies, creative agencies and brands reduce emissions
Check the environmental impact of your website
Estimate your web page carbon footprint
Use the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines to build a more sustainable, accessible website
Find out how to deliver sustainable web design projects and strategies
A digital declutter toolkit that helps you measure and reduce the digital carbon emissions of your business
World Wide Waste podcast. Interviews with a variety of prominent thinkers on how to make digital as sustainable as possible
Spreadsheet to help calculate the carbon emissions caused by digital events, e.g. meetings, webinars.
Carbon Positive aims to make podcasts carbon positive via carbon offsetting.
What have we missed?
If you know of any other useful sustainability tools or resources that we should add, please send us an email: info@ab-uk.com. Let’s share our knowledge to build a better world.
Team up
Want to go a step further? Check out these industry groups and initiatives. See how you can take action with others to make our sector more sustainable:
Advertising Community Together inspire, promote and unite the ad community on sustainability and industry responsibility
Purpose Disruptors mobilise a network of advertising insiders to transform our industry together
Ad Net Zero is the advertising industry’s drive to reduce the carbon impact of developing, producing and running advertising to real net zero
Join the B-Corp movement to use business as a force for good. This is not specific to the marketing sector but is open to businesses that commit to positively impact workers, communities, customers, and our planet.
This framework is led by Chief Marketing Officers. It’s designed to galvanise marketers to promote and reinforce attitudes and behaviours to help the world meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Sign the sustainable web manifesto
Want to add your initiative to this list? Let us know at info@ab-uk.com
An agency’s view: advice and tips
Henry Sanford, Partner at AB, has been leading the charge to make AB more sustainable. We asked what advice he would share with the Building Brands community to help others get started on their own sustainability journey.
When we first started to talk about sustainability in marketing, it really felt like the elephant in the room. We were going to client meetings, conferences and industry events, and no one was raising the topic of sustainability.
We started to do some research and realised that there are loads of great minds, teams and organisations working in this area, but there wasn’t a central place that gathered all the resources and information together.
That’s why we created the greener comms guide. We wanted one place that we could signpost our colleagues, suppliers, clients and wider networks to. Hopefully it will prove to be a useful starting point for the Building Brands community too.
There’s so much support out there if you’re looking to make some changes and work more sustainably, which is fantastic. In my experience, however, it can feel a bit overwhelming knowing where to start. These are some of the things we have learnt so far along the way.
Start small
You don’t have to change everything all at once. You can start with something small. Often the small changes actually make your life easier, too.
We have encouraged our team to unsubscribe from emails and newsletters that they don’t read and are just clogging up their inbox. We’ve also swapped Google for Ecosia, which plants trees and uses solar energy.
We also designed a background image for client video calls. Most people were using this as a default every time they made a call, but we’ve now switched so that they’re only used for client calls. During internal calls with colleagues, we just blur our backgrounds or turn video off and this has been a really simple way to cut emissions.
Keep talking about sustainability
We’ve learnt that it’s useful and helpful to keep raising the topic of sustainability. It helps to normalise green behaviours, such as using reusable cups for our coffee breaks, and reminds people to keep thinking about their own impact and what they could be doing.
I teamed up with another local agency leader recently and we delivered a joint talk at an industry networking event about sustainable communication. It was great to get the conversation going with different people and businesses, to share best practice and swap ideas.
Find the people who are passionate about the planet
You will no doubt have colleagues or connections that are passionate about sustainability. If you work with other people, find the eco warriors and get them on board. It helps to have people around you to champion the cause, divide up the workload, rally other colleagues or clients and research solutions to cutting carbon.
You can connect and share your experiences with Henry on Linkedin
About AB Brand & Marketing
AB is a brand and marketing agency. We help small marketing teams achieve big ambitions.
Our team works across brand, digital and content. We produce beautifully crafted and effective communications that get results.
We support our clients with better growth. That means we help them to develop positive, sustainable and financial growth.
Our clients include British Council, Caterpillar, Floris, Knauf Insulation and North Devon Hospice.
As well as supporting our clients, we want our people to grow. We celebrated our 40 th birthday as an agency in 2023 and earned a place on Campaign’s Best Places to Work list for 2023.
SustainABility
We work hard to make AB a positive business for people and the planet.
As part of these efforts, we have introduced:
Environmental goals for all employees, asking our team to do their bit for the planet
An environmental policy to help us better manage the environmental aspects of our operations
A hazardous waste disposal policy to protect the environment and public health
A virtual office stewardship policy to reduce our environmental impact and continually improve our environmental performance.
A guide to greener comms.
Sustainability is a long-term project, and we’re committed to keep tracking, measuring and working on our progress in this area.
We’re working towards B-Corp accreditation, for which businesses are required to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. B Corps commit to positively impact all stakeholders – workers, communities, customers, and our planet – through their business activities.
Find out more at www.ab-uk.com.
Thank you
A huge thank you to AB Brand and Marketing for putting this incredible resource together for the Building Brands Community.
We’ll be taking note of a lot of these points and trying our best to put them into action. Protecting our environment is more important now than it’s ever been, and it’s our responsibility to ensure that we do everything that we can in order to improve things. Just because something might be difficult to achieve, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try.
I hope you have learnt something from this. If you want to speak to AB Brand and Marketing about how they can help you make those changes, they would be delighted to hear from you. You can email them at info@ab-uk.com or call them on 01392 211 765