Written by Shona Smith on Sep 9, 2020. Posted in General Interest

UK Advertising Climate Action Working Group Launches AdGreen

The Climate Action Working Group, led by the Advertising association in partnership with ISBA and the IPA launch AdGreen to set a new standard for zero-carbon and zero-waste Ad Production.

The new, industry-wide initiative has set 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.

Industry specialist Jo Coombes leads with support from strategy advisor Tricia Duffy and is in a strategic partnership with albert, the BAFTA led sustainability project for the TV and Film industry.

AdGreen provides a carbon footprint calculator incorporating global carbon factors from over 140 countries, as well as specialist training, a renewable energy buy-in scheme. Later, certification and a high-quality off-setting scheme for the UK advertising community in the UK will launch although AdGreen state that “we must reduce first, and only offset where unavoidable and only then with the right certified schemes that actually achieve carbon restrictions. Our focus first and foremost will be on measurement as we cannot offset correctly until we know much is needed to be offset”.

AdGreen's Industry Sustainability Lead Jo Coombes said “We want to build a future-proofed, 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 initiative has received industry-wide backing and count adam&eveDDB, APR (Advertising Production Resources), Havas, MullenLowe, Sky, Unilever and WPP along with the support of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and the Advertising Producers Association (APA), the Association of Photographers (AOP) and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) as founding members. Mark Read, CEO WPP says “WPP has a responsibility to use our scale and power of creativity to influence society and change behaviour. As founding partners of AdGreen, we’re helping to set a new industry-wide benchmark for a zero carbon and zero waste ad production future that supports clients in achieving their carbon reduction goals and makes green ad production the norm.”

AdGreen is also exploring ways to establish the standard at an international level and welcomes enquiries from interested parties from around the world. Steve Davies, Chief Executive, Advertising Producers Association, said: “While AdGreen is being established by the UK industry, it will carry data on the world’s most used locations. Much of UK ad production takes place overseas as we continue to be a global hub for production so ultimately it has the potential to become the standard for our industry worldwide which is hugely exciting.”

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 weareadgreen.org

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