AdGreen adds carbon calculator to industry toolkit

It is only through measurement that you know things are improving – and AdGreen, a consortium of agencies and advertisers including Unilever, Google, and Sky, collaborating with the Advertising Association, is releasing a carbon calculator for the advertising production industry. It adds another tool to the ad industry’s efforts to curb emissions.

Why it matters

This latest effort addresses Action 3 of the Ad Net Zero five-point action plan in that it wants to help curb emissions from the production of advertising, and adds to a suite of tools that includes the IPA’s Media Carbon Calculator.

What you need to know

• The calculator works by allowing users to enter information in four key areas (travel and transport, energy and fuels, materials, catering) that relate to a production and so build up a picture of its carbon impact.
  
• The tool will be free to use, funded by the AdGreen levy. This is an initiative announced in June that places a 0.25% charge on production spend, paid by participating advertisers, and collected by their agencies before being passed to AdGreen each quarter.
• Over 130 brands, advertising agencies and production companies pre-registered to use the tool ahead of its launch. The more brands and agencies that participate, the richer the data will be that can help the industry curb the most carbon-intensive activities.
• Future planned developments include: bid process functionality so that projects can be compared by not just budget and treatment, but environmental impact too; a reporting dashboard to allow users to pull information required for company carbon reporting. 
• The tool, which is released today, can be found at AdGreen’s carbon calculator page. To find out more about how to use the tool, AdGreen is hosting a webinar tomorrow morning (Thursday 30 September).

Key quotes

“Draft footprints can be created at script stage which will allow creative teams to see if they have inadvertently baked emissions into their scripts. Similarly, it’ll mean that clients can see the carbon data on work they’re commissioning and make informed decisions at the procurement stage” – Jo Coombes, Project Director, AdGreen.

Sourced from AdGreen, Advertising Association [Image: AdGreen]