Earth Day : How we look to reduce our environmental impact

Earth Day is a time to reflect and demonstrate your support for the environment. At Total Media, we wanted to take this time to celebrate all the green initiatives we have introduced to the agency so far, as well as outline our future commitments to ensure we are continuing to take steps to reduce our carbon footprint.

How have we looked to reduce our environmental impact as an agency?

At Total Media, we have a dedicated Green Team whose aim is to make our agency as environmentally friendly as possible. We seek to ensure our suppliers are in line with our environmental policies and help to keep day to day environmental matters at the forefront of our business, such as reducing meat consumption in business meetings, monitoring our energy usage and setting targets to improve our recycling rate, and more. We also audit our carbon footprint and have implemented a carbon reduction plan.

We were the first independent media agency to gain B Corp accreditation back in March 2021. This was such a proud moment for us, but the work didn’t stop there. We have made numerous changes and improvements since then and are confident we will improve our score when we come to recertify in March 2024. Last month, we submitted our B Corp Impact Report and were so proud to see it all come together and it really put into perspective all the work we have and are doing to continue bettering our agency.

We became completely carbon neutral last year, reaching our target 3 years before our goal of 2025 and 8 years before the Ad Net Zero target. Last year our carbon emissions calculated to 87 tonnes and we offset this through two Gold Standard projects.

This year, considering we have grown in people and included home working and business travel in our scope 3 calculations, we were thrilled to see our carbon emissions reduce to 60 tonnes, which is a huge improvement. This shows our new Business Travel Policy and Electric Car Policy are already having a positive impact on our carbon emissions.

Alongside regular employee updates, sharing resources and suggestions on inspiring ways to be greener, the Green Team have led many initiatives improving the sustainability of our offices including:

• Changing our website to green servers
• Offsetting the carbon of business flights, through 80% carbon offsetting projects and 20% sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) as an alternative to fossil fuels
• Switching to recycled or organic kitchen products
• Restricting aircon access to avoid energy wastage
• Providing eco-friendly sanitary products through B Corp Natracare
• Using our expertise in behavioural science to change societal norms in the office. For example, changing ‘general waste’ signs to read ‘landfill’ to better highlight where the waste will end up
• Sharing employee quizzes which along with other actions resulted in improving our recycling rate from 62% to 76%.

We won’t stop there! We already have exciting green initiatives coming up this year…

At Total Media everyone is given two charity days to use a year. One is to be used toward our charity partner Young Westminster Foundation and the other can be a personal choice. To ensure we are making the most of these days, the Green Team have arranged an environmental volunteering day. This will take place at a nature reserve and includes tasks such as repairing infrastructure, planting wildflower and making deadwood habitats. The nature reserve is a place children go on school trips so we will also be creating new interactive elements for the community.

We also have plans to reduce carbon emissions on our campaigns

Now that we have improved our own operations, we want to turn our attention towards how we can impact the wider advertising supply chain. The process of buying and serving media can be a surprisingly carbon intensive process, with programmatic a particularly bad offender. So, we are actively working with media partners who share our vision and are developing more sustainable solutions.

For example, some partners are now able to measure the carbon footprint of a campaign in real time, optimize accordingly, and offset the carbon generated. By doing this, we are able to offer our clients carbon neutral media plans, which can be a real benefit to them as so many businesses look to make a difference in this area.

The developments in this space are coming thick and fast, and we as a team want to stay at the forefront of them to ensure we are offering market leading solutions that make a difference.

But what is this all for?

We aren’t doing all this just because it’s the right thing to do, we really do care. We truly want to be a business that upholds the highest standards of ethics whilst making a substantial difference to the world. In light of Earth Day, we came across some alarming stats such as, the average wildlife populations dropping by 60% in just over 40 years, with more than 1 million species facing extinction, and two thirds of extreme weather events in the last 20 years being influenced by humans. Something must change, and as B Corp say, we want to make our business a force for good.