UK Digital Marketing Agency Builds Back Greener
You’d be forgiven for thinking that digital marketing is relatively eco-friendly, after all it’s an online commodity unlike traditional print marketing.
However, the digital technology sector as a whole emits around 2% of global CO2 emissions and, given the phenomenal growth in the industry, has actually surpassed the airline industry in terms of the level of its impact.
It’s not just the tech companies contributing – it’s the consumers too; think about it, when you’re typing away at your laptop then it’s using electricity. If you send a message or email then it goes through a network and it takes electricity to run that network.
Any information you send needs to be stored somewhere and that somewhere will more than likely be the cloud, which is actually a giant data centre which uses a stack of electricity too.
Just because we can’t see the effects within our surroundings like we can with cars or giant chimneys, it’s no less dangerous to the environment.
STOP BEING SO NICE
You’ve probably replied to at least a handful of emails today and it’s more than likely that you’ve got sucked into the never-ending cycle of ‘thank you…no thank you’ emails.
Maybe you’ve sent a couple of WhatsApp messages and done a Google search for whether you need to take an umbrella to work with you.
Whether you’re sharing a picture of your lunch, facetiming your family or streaming the latest box set on Netflix, you’re adding a few grams of carbon dioxide into the environment thanks to the power needed to run your devices and the Wi-Fi networks you’re connected to.
And, while the energy needed for a single internet search or email is small, over half of the global population now use the internet, and those little bits of energy all add up. So much so that it’s estimated that they account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, These emissions are predicted to double by 2025.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
Recognising that every little helps, the owner of Liverpool based Digital Marketing Agency, Blaze Media decided it was time to make some changes after reflecting on his business during the first UK lockdown.
MD Paul Webley made a bold first move, swapping his sports car for an electric car after evaluating his own carbon footprint.
He says “I was doing 25,000 – 30,000 miles a year in a gas guzzling car, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and I decided there had to be a better way.”
It was the first step in a process that led to an environmental policy that now means all of the team’s commuting and other business travel is done via foot, bike, public transport or electric car.
They have also signed up to Ecologi and pledge to plant at least 50 trees a month to offset the company’s remaining carbon emissions, planting almost 600 trees since they started the initiative.
They also contribute regularly to social enterprise B1G1, which funds projects all over the world. “I wouldn’t describe myself as an environmental warrior,” Paul adds. “But we’ve been climate positive [offsetting more carbon than the business emits] for the past 6 months. I feel better about it.”