The IPA are proud to be supporting AdGreen, a new initiative by the AA's Climate Action Working Group to unite the advertising industry to eliminate the negative environmental impacts of production.
AdGreen is backed at launch by adam&eveDDB, APR (Advertising Production Resources), Havas, MullenLowe Group as part of IPG, Sky, Unilever and WPP, along with the support of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Advertising Producers Association
(APA), the Association of Photographers (AOP) and Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) who will be coordinating member participation. It will be led by industry specialist, Jo Coombes with support from strategy advisor Tricia Duffy, and is a strategic
partnership with albert, the BAFTA led sustainability project for the TV and Film Industry. Following the learnings of albert, AdGreen will provide tools, services and expertise to the entire UK advertising production community from 2021, enabling all advertising professionals
to improve the way campaign assets are produced for a better climate future.
AdGreen launches with two clear aims: to measure advertising production carbon footprints allowing the project team to understand which activities have the biggest impact, and to empower the industry to reduce emissions and to act for a zero carbon / zero waste. It will
offer a carbon footprint calculator incorporating global carbon factors from over 140 countries, as well as specialist training, a renewable energy buy-in scheme, and later, certification and a high-quality offsetting scheme, for the advertising community in the UK.
The Advertising Association is actively seeking more partners to accelerate the uptake and impact of AdGreen. All advertisers, agencies and production companies looking to find out more about AdGreen should register their interest at its website. AdGreen is also exploring ways to establish the standard at an international level and welcomes enquiries from interested parties in territories from around the world.
Says Jo Coombes, Industry Sustainability Lead, AdGreen: "We want to build a futureproofed, carbon literate workforce, giving us the opportunity for the highest creative ambition with the lowest carbon impact. Ultimately, AdGreen means everyone producing advertising
work will be able to capture and understand their own footprint data; advertisers and advertising agencies will be able to compare that to anonymised benchmarks."
The IPA is very pleased to be supporting this cross-industry initiative because many IPA agencies and their production partners have been working with industry specialist Jo Coombes over the last couple of years to try and make productions “greener”. With the development of the Carbon Footprint Calculator, producers will be able to assess the waste and carbon emissions from advertising production and help achieve a zero carbon/z ero waste future. Creative problem identified. Creative problem hopefully solved. Together.
Says James Best, Chair of the Climate Action Working Group: "We face the biggest challenge of our lifetime but there are many ways, often small but important changes, that we can all make to tackle this challenge. We know that our industry is hugely concerned about the climate emergency and want to do everything in their power to avert it. To that end, this launch is will be the first of a series of actions we will be publishing to help everyone in"
The Climate Action workstream is a key part of the Advertising Association Council’s new responsibility agenda in 2020, following the launch of the association’s new mission: to promote the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy.
Anybody interested in the industry’s work around Climate Action should contact the Advertising Association at [email protected] and can keep up to date on progress at the Climate Action policy page on the Advertising Association’s website.