With the COP26 summit around the corner, environment issues are regularly headline news. It seems now more than ever people are starting to sit up and take notice of climate change. It’s hard to keep your head in the sand when every year we’re seeing increasingly extreme weather with shocking scenes of wildfires and flooding around the world.
The UK and 109 other countries have now pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. Going one step further is the Advertising Association who have launched the initiative to take UK advertising’s carbon emissions to real net zero by the end of 2030.
Part of this initiative is AdGreen, who are enabling the advertising community to measure and understand waste and carbon impacts as well as providing resources to help us become more sustainable.
Every member of the Jam team has completed the 2 hour AdGreen training session to learn more about sustainable production and changes we can make in our everyday lives to help reduce carbon emissions. Our commitment to making our company more sustainable is now well underway. We have switched to a 100% renewable electricity supplier, committed to plant a tree for every job we complete, and most of the team now drive electric cars.
One of the tools that is being rolled out by AdGreen is the Carbon Calculator which will help productions to calculate a carbon budget. This can then help the industry to collect data on the average carbon spend so that we can be provided with data insights and benchmarking for future projects.
Hopefully we’ll see advertisers get on board with a more sustainable approach even if that means there is a sacrifice – whether it’s a slightly higher budget, meat free catering or missing out on filming in a glamorous location. Perhaps in the future we’ll see a carbon rating on every ad as an additional incentive for brands to push for more sustainable productions. A positive rating is automatically good PR whereas a high carbon rating might turn off potential customers and leave the client regretting their decision to film on the other side of the world.
Some of these changes are easier to make than others but to achieve a sustainable future we will all have to make some sacrifices. What are we as an industry prepared to do for the future of the planet? It really is the only one we have.
