Frequently Asked Questions
Need help with something else? Our resources FAQs might just provide the answer you’re looking for.
Ad Net Zero is the Advertising Association’s net-zero strategy for the advertising industry as a whole, which comprises 5 actions points:
- Getting your house in order – advertising business operations
- Curbing emissions from advertising productions
- Curbing emissions from media planning, buying and distribution
- Curbing emissions through awards and from events
- Harnessing advertising’s power to support consumer behaviour change
AdGreen exists to support the advertising production industry with action point 2 by providing resources, tools and training to help the community measure and reduce emissions from the production of advertising content.
Yes. AdGreen is funded by a 0.25% levy on production spend, paid by participating advertisers via their principal production partners (advertising agencies in most cases). The levy funding enables us to provide tools, resources and training to the community at large.
Everything we do produces carbon (even breathing!), so this is the common unit of measurement we use when talking about our impact. Unless we are working carbon neutrally (i.e. all the energy we need is obtained from renewable sources like the sun or wind), everything we do has an output that can be converted into an amount of carbon units (generally measured in kilos or tonnes). Different activities expend different amounts of carbon. When we talk about our carbon footprint, we are talking about the impact a specific activity has on the environment. This could be driving a car to the studio, the production itself, or the industry as a whole.
Throughout our comms, events, resources, tools and training we talk about carbon emissions from four specific activity types: transport, spaces (and how we power them), materials and disposal. Transport is likely to generate the most emissions on a project – especially if you’re flying – and then energy used to power spaces, then materials used, and finally how they’re disposed of. When a production’s footprint is being recorded in the carbon calculator, everything falls into one of these areas, and you’ll be able to see which activity type is contributing the most. Throughout the resources guide you’ll see which category each action will have an effect on.
This is a tricky question to answer as every project is different – we have a wide range of carbon footprint sizes in our tool, which represent a wide variety of projects. You can look at the AdGreen Annual Review to see the average footprint for 2022 across all completed projects.
Switching from business flights to economy flights reduces emissions by 60% on average. This is because the proportion of the flight’s carbon which is allocated to each seat is relative to the amount of space the seat takes up. Economy seats have a smaller carbon footprint because they have a smaller actual footprint!
Switch your spaces to renewable energy – and ask your usual suppliers whether they’re running on renewables too. Next up, cater vegan, and shoot close to home or with local crew.
That would be one that tries to reduce its transport and energy needs in the first place (ideally at script stage), and then finds ways to decarbonise – either through green tariffs for mains power or by using renewable alternatives for location power. There would be a zero to landfill policy in place, making sure as much as possible is prepared for reuse, and that waste is sorted into different streams and recycled as much as possible. The ‘end life’ would be considered for every item purchased for the shoot, from large set builds, to drives, batteries and croc clips. And lastly, making sure that all the materials brought into the production are coming from sustainable sources in the first place!
You should reduce everything you possibly can in the first instance before resorting to offsetting. However there are likely to be unavoidable emissions in almost every advertising production footprint and to be carbon neutral you will need to offset them. As part of the AdGreen carbon calculator, you can predict carbon emissions, enabling you to allocate money in your budget to offset the unavoidable emissions at the end of your production.
Check out Planetmark’s Carbon 101 session which took place at a summit we were part of. You could also buy a (used) copy of Mike Berners Lee’s How Bad Are Bananas? which gives you carbon information for a whole host of everyday things. It’s also where we get some of the stats for our training session – which is also a good next step, take our training!
For dealing with your operational footprint (i.e. emissions associated with the day to day running of your business, as opposed to those relating to specific projects), we recommend engaging a consultancy to help you define a scope of measurement, and set benchmarks and targets. There are plenty around and we’re happy to provide a recommendation if you’d like to email us.
Many companies are now engaged with their own carbon reduction targets. Whilst advertising production may be a small piece of the overall pie for some, it’s still a contributor to the bigger picture. By joining the conversation, each party involved can play their part in reducing emissions as much as possible. Big infrastructure shifts are required to get to zero, but the more companies involved in the discussion the better, as more demand should open up more supply. It’s very likely we’ll also see mandatory scope 3 reporting (as well as scopes 1 and 2) for more and more organisations – so getting involved in carbon calculation now will help you get prepared. We can already imagine a future where those servicing the advertisers are working to a carbon budget as well as a financial one.
AdGreen offers its tools, resources and training free at the point of use to those in the advertising production community. It is the advertising agencies and production companies who have need to measure and reduce the carbon associated with the activities being undertaken, in order to produce work for the advertiser. Therefore, AdGreen’s recommendation is that advertisers contribute to the AdGreen project via the AdGreen levy (a 0.25% charge on top of production budgets). These contributions ensure that the tools, resources and training can continue to be offered to their production suppliers.
This really depends on the scale of the production and the elements involved. Generally speaking, carbon follows cost, so the smaller the budget the smaller the impact is likely to be. The majority of carbon for the average footprint is associated with air travel. If this is removed (e.g. attendees are replaced with local crew), there is a cost (and carbon) saving of the flight, hotel and per diem / meals. Similarly if less waste is produced, it should cost you less to remove from the shoot. In the same way, reducing power needs to save carbon from electricity or fuel consumption should result in lower costs – as studios usually charge by the unit for example, and generator companies by fuel used.
Some products and services which support reduced carbon production of the work we make may be higher, whilst they are newer and demand is not as high, but we hope these will continue to fall as demand increases.
Advertisers and Principal Production Partners are of course free to work with ‘green’ consultancies/consultants, independent of engaging with AdGreen’s offerings.
However, if the advertiser’s Principal Production Partner is using the resources, tools and training provided by AdGreen, it is hoped the advertiser would contribute to the AdGreen Levy, and that their Principal Production Partner would be happy to collect it from them on AdGreen’s behalf. N.B. It is recommended that the levy is not applied to green consultant costs, on principal. However, this is not included in the official exclusions noted in the levy guide.
Some Principal Production Partners and 3rd Party Production Partners may choose to add other costs to facilitate ‘green production’. For example, this could be a ‘green’ runner or specialist recycling services for a particular material which is being used. Just like any other line item, it would be up to the production supplier to advocate for the value in these items (ideally in tandem with the reduction in emissions they will affect), and it would be at the discretion of the client as to whether they are happy to pay for these line items.