Introduction

Getting this right can help reduce your negative impact on the environment and benefit your business through:

• cost savings from increased efficiency
• increased creativity and productivity from a more engaged workforce
• stronger relationships with clients from helping them to deliver on their corporate sustainability targets, making you their agency of choice

There are three parts to this:

• 3.2.1. Your operations as a business – making simple changes in how you operate can save you money and set the tone to encourage sustainable behaviour in the work you do.
• 3.2.2. How you produce your client content – this is an opportunity to work with your clients to innovate and offer creative solutions to reduce emissions and waste.
• 3.2.3. How you deliver client content to audiences – this is the hidden impact of campaigns – the carbon emissions from digital media and the media platforms you use.
  

For each of these areas you need to:

• Understand what the issues are.
• Measure where you are at – establish your baseline.
• Set a target of where you want to be.
• Act to reduce your negative impact (and increase your positive impact).

Proposed key targets

To help you track your progress and start to build a benchmark across the industry, we recommended that, as a minimum, all agencies set targets and track progress in the following areas:

• Carbon emission reduction*:
  • Scope 1 reduction target
  • Scope 2 reduction target
  • Scope 3 reduction target
• Waste reduction

It’s highly likely that your clients will start asking for this information sooner rather than later, so it’s good to get ahead of the game.

Carbon emissions:

• Scope 1 emissions: Scope 1 covers emissions from sources that an organisation owns or controls directly – e.g. from burning fuel in our fleet of vehicles (if they’re not electrically-powered).
• Scope 2 emissions: Scope 2 are emissions that a company causes indirectly and come from where the energy it purchases and uses is produced. For example, the emissions caused when generating the electricity that we use in our buildings would fall into this category.
• Scope 3 emissions: Scope 3 encompasses emissions that are not produced by the company itself and are not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for up and down its value chain. An example of this is when we buy, use and dispose of products from suppliers. Scope 3 emissions include all sources not within the Scope 1 and 2 boundaries.

For further information, help in baselining where you are and setting targets, please refer to the links at the end of this section, including the work by Ad Net Zero, IPA Media Climate Charter and the SME Climate Hub.