Why media is going green

What promises to be most interesting is the trickle-down effect of the major corporates' conscientious awakening on the industries that supply them - including media. While its time in the eco spotlight hasn't yet arrived, it will certainly come. Between media agencies and media owners, there are significant moves afoot - we haven't seen anything yet.

Media agencies reduce waste

Like other companies of comparable size, thinking media agencies are working towards "greening up" their act: minimising waste, recycling where possible and easing off on taxis and needless paper copies.

But some have also realised that their position in the supply chain brings a responsibility to advise clients on the environmental implications of their media choices.

ZenithOptimedia is taking that thought one step further, by looking into the possibility of formulating a green index for communications planning. It has been talking to The CarbonNeutral Company, a carbon-offsetting and climate change expert that advises a number of media and advertising agencies and owners.

The thinking behind the project is that, if successful, it should enable eco-sensitive clients to roll their green objectives into their advertising and marketing.

Executive creative director Lucy Banks says: "The idea is that if, say, Toyota Prius wants to do an ad campaign, we can let them know the carbon cost of that campaign and look at ways we might reduce it.

"You still have to meet objectives of reaching a particular group of people at (a particular) cost, but it gives you options: you might look at employing solar-powered outdoor, or knocking on doors and talking to people instead of using direct mail."

It doesn't take a scientist to appreciate that a green planning tool calls for some complex sums. ZenithOptimedia is already working on metrics, but expects the results will be ready in "months rather than weeks".

If other major media agencies are preparing anything similar, says Banks, the environmental agencies ZenithOptimedia has been talking to haven't heard about it, although stand-alone products do exist. Some large agencies have concluded privately that it is simply too soon to take such a concept to clients.

Beyond just responsible corporate citizenship, there is a clear new business advantage in being able to offer "green" media to CSR-conscious clients.

Once clients show an interest, agencies can take the business to media owners as evidence that investment in greener processes will be rewarded.

But it's also a pre-emptive strike. Given the current green frenzy, it can only be a matter of time before the spotlight falls on the impact of media and communications, and agencies are obliged to account for the channels they use.

Roy Jeans, chief executive of outdoor specialist IPM, certainly thinks so, which is why the agency has invited its clients to offset carbon emissions by adding the costs to their outdoor budget.

"In time, somebody, whether in Brussels or at Ofcom, is going to say, 'if you are producing all this crap, you are going to be forced to do something about it'," he believes.

Today, media remains some way down the list of eco priorities for most corporates. And there are no obvious signs that the sector is a target for legislators.

Dorothy MacKenzie, chairman of brand marketing agency Dragon and member of the Marks & Spencer Sustainability Board, says: "It is really only now that people are starting to think of the environmental impact of packaging and things like that.

"Most people assume advertising doesn't really have an impact - they are so focused on the supply chain and the manufacturing process."

It's true that communications practices are nothing like the largest contributors to the carbon footprint of most corporates.

That is one reason, according to Diana Verde Nieto, chief executive of ethical marketing agency Clownfish, why brand teams and their agencies are not yet accustomed to reporting back on their SEE (social, environmental and ethical) performance, unlike those in research and development, manufacturing, distribution and construction.

"Typically, marketing operations might be responsible for just 10% of an FMCG company's environmental impacts, compared with 50% of its operational budget," she says.

Clownfish, alongside marketing solutions specialist Be The Brand Experience, has developed its own green index. The web-based Noughtilus system breaks each channel down into key activities, also factoring in sub-activities relating to the resources used in the process. Users enter the volumes of each activity and define a range of variables; the system then returns an estimated set of impacts.

Media agencies may have to get used to these sorts of calculations once the greener clients reach the media end of the supply chain.

Some, such as New PHD and its client Innocent Drinks, are already looking at the possibility of carbon-neutral advertising campaigns. Other socially conscious corporate citizens such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer, whose chief executive Stuart Rose announced the £200m Plan A green drive in January, will no doubt follow in due course.

Walker Media managing partner Nick Walker says: "As part of Plan A, M&S is starting to get its suppliers involved. We are one of its suppliers and we are starting to do things, although M&S hasn't put any pressure on us. We are starting with things such as printing outdoor on recyclable paper - that is one of the first initiatives we are looking at."

Exactly who should take the lead in agency-client efforts to promote sustainability remains somewhat moot, although IPM pushed the envelope in April when it announced its own carbon-offsetting initiative.

Although the scheme was initiated by the agency, it was inspired by a client, according to Jeans.

"One of our clients is Sky and it is very hot on the whole issue of carbon emissions," he says. "We thought, this is a key issue and it is going to become an even bigger issue, so we need to do something about it."

IPM's first act was to bring in The CarbonNeutral Company, which provides calculators that measure the CO2 created by everything from TV commercials to direct marketing and posters, to audit its own practices - just as ZenithOptimedia and other large agencies have done.

"It was important for us to start at home, so you get your ducks in a row first," says Jeans.

Sue Welland, co-founder and creative director of the environmental company, explains: "Everything you do has a CO2 cost - a piece of direct marketing produces its own weight in CO2. It's all very well to talk about 'green', but if you put a number to it, it gives you the power to do something."

Of all the media, outdoor is a prime candidate for wholesale clean-up, which is why outdoor media owners have been some of the sharpest early movers. But those agencies active in the space are clear that no good can come of finger-pointing.

ZenithOptimedia's Banks concedes: "You can't start saying, 'Conde Nast is bad, because it uses a lot of paper, and Yahoo! is okay, because it is online'. We are always going to use media that work for our clients, but where there is the will to improve things, we want to give them the ability to do so."

Media owners eye carbon neutrality

The climate action lobby picked up a high-profile, if unlikely, new ambassador in May with Rupert Murdoch's announcement that News Corporation expects to be carbon neutral by 2010.

Murdoch was inspired by son James's efforts at Sky, which - with the help again of The CarbonNeutral Company - went carbon neutral in April 2006, making it something of a trailblazer.

News Corp's strategy will have been of great interest to rival media owners, particularly as News Corp expects energy efficiencies to account for only a proportion of the calculation: the group aims to reduce its carbon footprint by 10% in five years, while investing in renewable energy projects to offset the rest.

The announcement attracted both praise and raised eyebrows, but News Corp is not the first media owner to have mobilised itself to reduce waste and promote sustainability. The print industry took action in the 1990s and is now reasonably satisfied that the bulk of its processes stand up to scrutiny. Others, such as the outdoor sector, have been working hard in recent years to clean up their act, with some impressive results.

The problem is that obvious issues, such as the immediate energy efficiency of a given media owner or a particular channel, are not the only ones to bubble up when serious scientific standards are applied to the production process.

A report from the Carbon Trust last year included a case study on Trinity Mirror, which found it well aware of its own direct carbon impact. However, the report also revealed that emissions from Trinity Mirror's operations made up less than one-fifth of the total carbon footprint of its flagship paper, The Mirror, with the rest added by processes and raw materials used by other companies in the supply chain.

The same applies on a channel basis. In evaluating the environmental impact of a direct mail piece, Noughtilus's green index assesses the timber and recycled content used to produce the paper stock, as well as the types of bleach used in the whitening process, the types and levels of toxins in the ink and their biodegradability, and the energy employed and waste created at every stage, from production and preparation of raw materials to the design process and the shoot.

Cinema advertising might seem entirely innocuous, but the film itself is not biodegradable, so this should probably be factored into its carbon footprint.

Indeed, each channel has its own Achilles' heel.

Clownfish's Verde Nieto says: "Television advertising produces little physical waste in terms of materials, but it is often more impactful in the production process, especially if film crews are flown to exotic locations for shoots.

"Websites and e-mails have very light environmental footprints, but still require energy to power the computers and screens that represent their channel."

Given its dependence on large quantities of both paper and electricity, the outdoor sector has been working hard to minimise the impact of its various activities.

The efforts of the leading outdoor players illustrate the many areas in which efficiencies can potentially be found - some of them more obvious than others.

JCDecaux, for instance, has cut its energy consumption by 30%, having installed more efficient, longer-lasting fluorescent tubes in its back-illuminated posters, while the PVC inside those sites is now being turned into benches and cones at the end of its working life.

The company also sent 2,800 metric tonnes of paper for recycling last year and installed 700 solar-powered bus shelters in Plymouth, but group marketing director David McEvoy says these efforts are just the latest in a long-term push.

"Because we work in the out-of-home space, we know we have an impact on the environment and we have been working for a long time to reduce the environmental impact of what we do," he says. "We work with local authorities - we have to be a good corporate citizen."

Clear Channel clearly feels the same, recycling 100% of its posters and investigating ways to do the same with glass. It uses energy-efficient lighting in its illuminated sites, while its fleet runs on liquidised petroleum gas - as does the JCDecaux fleet - and it is trialling hybrid and electrical cars.

The focus is usually on negative by-products of the supply process, but there are positive examples. Although the print media sector is generally assumed to wolf down precious paper at a terrifying rate, IPC manufacturing director Jasper Scott says the European paper industry is more responsible than some might imagine. And, of course, while we're on the subject of reducing carbon levels, credit has to go to any industry whose business is planting trees.

"The paper industry in Europe plants more trees than it harvests," says Scott. "It is grown like a crop, and that is actually very good for the environment. From a manufacturing and production point of view, the publishing industry is in reasonably good shape on the environmental side of things."

If the carbon debate tells us one thing, however, it is that manufacturing is very rarely entirely environmentally harmonious, and there are still many environmental issues that involve the entire publishing industry.

Increasing the recycled content is not only an issue of saving trees - it also significantly reduces the energy consumed in paper manufacturing, according to the Carbon Trust. To some extent, newspaper groups have this covered: an agreement made in 1991 between the newspaper groups has raised the level of recycled content in newsprint from 28% 16 years ago to today's 80.6% - close to the maximum amount possible.

However, the manufacturing of paper for use in the abundant glossy magazines is more energy-intensive than manufacturing for newsprint, while newspapers that end up in landfill release significant quantities of methane as they biodegrade.

As for the newspaper industry, Newspaper Society communications director Lynne Anderson insists the press groups genuinely have the interests of the environment at heart.

"I have been asked whether the newspaper industry is just jumping on the environmental bandwagon, but they have been coming at this for many years, long before it became popular," she says.

Another key environmental question mark against paper is how it is transported. European manufacturers increasingly use rail, although the UK's own infrastructure still makes excessive use of road haulage.

In the magazine distribution sector, several initiatives are in operation to increase transport efficiency. With its distributor Frontline, Emap has made a priority of attacking the ratio of copies printed to copies sold, partly by installing intelligent systems to curb over-supply to newsagents. Frontline's copy allocation system uses point-of-sale data to determine which retailers need more copies, according to Emap Advertising marketing director Sam Fosbury.

"We don't send out all the magazines at the same time," she says. "Some of them are held back and we monitor EPoS data to see how they are selling. The industry average is 10 copies printed for every six sold, and ours is 10 for every seven."

Frontline and IPC's Marketforce both ensure that vehicles are as full as possible when out on the road. "It is known as backloading," says Scott. "If a truck turns up at the printers full of paper, instead of unloading it and sending it back to the depot it came from, we try to load it with printed magazines to be delivered to the warehouse or wholesaler."

Right across the media industry, large and small investments are giving rise to efficiencies of various kinds.

Johnston Press has reduced its gas consumption by almost a third with the opening of its Dinnington printing centre, which houses on-site recycling equipment that allows water and solvents to be cleaned and reused; GMG's Manchester Evening News, which recently went part-free, employs an army of people to pick up discarded copies from Manchester city centre for recycling.

This last example is apt because, as everyone from Rupert Murdoch downwards has observed, nothing works without the input of those on the ground. From the largest media owners to the smallest media agencies, the vast majority of initiatives invariably come as the result of employees' own concerns.

"That is good," says the Newspaper Society's Anderson, "because they are the ones who are having to implement all of these initiatives and it shows that there is a collective will to do it."

THE CLIMATE CHANGE BILL

In March, the Government published its blueprint for tackling climate change with the aim of easing the UK into a low-carbon economy.

The draft Climate Change Bill is the first of its kind in the world, putting in place legally binding targets of a 60% reduction in UK carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and a 26-32% reduction by 2020.

Other key points of the bill include:

- A new system of five-year "carbon budgets", set at least 15 years ahead, to provide clarity for businesses and individuals investing in low-carbon technologies

- A new statutory body, the Committee on Climate Change, to provide independent advice and guidance to the Government on achieving its targets

- New powers to enable the Government to implement policies to cut emissions

- An annual independent progress report to which the Government must respond. This will ensure the Government is held to account every year on its progress towards each five-year carbon budget, as well as the 2020 and 2050 targets

- A requirement for the Government to report at least every five years on current and predicted impacts of climate change and on its proposals and policy for adapting to it.