How Green is Aussie Media?

07/11/09 13:05 Filed in: Marketing
The environmental footprints of media companies have left deep indents on green audits carried out globally. Australia’s media claims to be doing the right thing, but are they? Sophia Russell from B&T checks out the landscape.
Transcript from 'The Green Guide' published October 16th 2009

Here’s a few statistics to mull over next time you book a television spot, sign off on that print campaign or create a banner ad. Christopher Sewell, chief executive at The Gaia Partnership (a green auditing business affiliated with pitch consultants Trinity P3), estimates that globally, media outlets release 240 billion tonnes of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere each year, based on research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson in the United States. Marketing communications was responsible for over 500 million tonnes of C02 emissions last year, an output that will grow by 5% annually. For some perspective, this is equivalent to the amount produced by over 380 million cars in a year.

Closer to home, the Australian media industry’s carbon footprint is unclear due to a lack of large- scale statistical analysis. Auditors use a rough calculation of approximately 330g of CO2 emissions for every dollar spent on media (try punching that into a calculator next time you’re planning a media schedule). However, Sewell points out that this formula doesn’t take into account the different levels of greenhouse gas emitted by each sector.

Sewell’s company – with help from RMIT University in Melbourne and other leading centres of academic research around the world – has developed a methodology to measure the carbon footprint of marketing activity in the media.

An audit conducted by TrinityP3 in Australia last year, based on a dummy media schedule of a typical campaign created by Maxus, found the internet topped the list emitting 2258kg of CO2 in order to reach 1million grocery buyers, followed by television at 1714kg, newspapers at 1000kg, cinema at 359kg, radio at 74kg and outdoor at 25kg. But before you start cancelling those banner ads, Sewell says working out the environmental sustainability of each medium is not as simple as punching in a few figures.

Advertisers also need to take into account the effectiveness of that medium and how often ads need to run, not to mention energy efficiency initiatives implemented by various media companies.

Then there’s the need to wade through corporate greenspeak – a difficult task when many media companies don’t disclose carbon-emission levels. “The problem with talking to the media is they can’t substantiate their claims,” says Sewell. “A lot of them claim carbon neutrality, but there’s a lot of cynicism coming out of Europe about that at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with some form of offset, but the big challenge for everybody is how do you measure and reduce your carbon emissions?”

Sewell believes the best way to reduce the environmental footprint of the media industry is widespread disclosure, so that decision makers at all levels can objectively compare which media has the least impact on the environment.
Until then, B&T takes a closer look at each media sector and how they’re travelling on the road to environmental sustainability.

Print

When it comes to the print industry, most agree Rupert Murdoch has led the charge towards a more sustainable future, which considering the amount of paper his businesses must have consumed over the decades, seems like an appropriate stance.

News Corp – which emitted 642,237 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in fiscal 2008, according to its 2008 sustainability report, 5% less than 2006 – has committed to being carbon neutral by 2010. “That’s not just about buying offsets,” insists Tony Wilkins, manager of environment and climate change at News Ltd. “More important is fundamentally reducing our emissions.” At ground level, this has meant implementing 95 energy-saving projects at News Ltd (details can be found at Onedegree.com.au) and spending $1.5 billion on new, environmentally- sustainable printing centres in Australia’s capital cities and in Townsville.

That’s not to say the rest of the publishing industry is new to green practices. Mark Hollands, chief executive of the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association, says Australia’s recycling efforts have improved since the establishment of the Publisher’s National Environment Bureau in the mid 1990s (current members include News, Fairfax, ACP, APN News and West Australian Newspapers).

In 1990, Australia’s recycling rate was 28% of used newspapers; a figure which jumped to 78% this year, ranking Australia as one of the top newspaper recyclers in the world. Hollands adds: “People erroneously think we cut down trees to make paper, but we don’t. Trees are cut down for building timbers, the remnant branches and wood-knots that can’t be used are for paper.” Paper mill company Norske Skog, which supplies over 95% of Australia’s newspapers, claims 77% of its paper fibres are made up of “forest residue” and 14% from recycled paper.

Publishers are more tight-lipped, however, when it comes to energy consumption. ACP declined to be interviewed for this feature and Fairfax Media was unavailable for comment (neither have information about sustainability policies on their websites).

Pacific Magazines requires suppliers to offer ISO 14001 environmental management accreditation as a minimum, but according to a spokesperson, its current CO2 emission levels are confidential.

And although Norske Skog’s Tasman mill in New Zealand partially runs on geothermal energy, Peter Chrisp, regional president of Norske Skog Australasia, says its Australian pulp mills mainly run on purchased energy. “It’s our Achilles heel of efforts to be green, that the energy in Australia is predominantly coming from coal fire,” says Chrisp. “We really need to solve the coal-fire power issue for Albury (Norske Skog’s NSW paper mill), so we’re looking at biomass co-generation (using renewable energy to create both steam and electricity) to power industrial processes... our next big challenge is a carbon-reduction target of 25% between 2006 and 2025.”

The print industry’s move from paper to online also poses an issue for the environment. Production company International Paper claims reading a daily newspaper results in 20% less CO2 emissions compared to reading web-based news for 30 minutes every day. However, Google claims the CO2 from producing a daily 100% recycled paper is the equivalent to 850 Google searches. It seems the jury is still out on which medium is more energy efficient, depending on which side you bat for.

News Ltd’s Wilkins expects more answers to emerge as more research is conducted. “The emissions in print versus digital media is one of the hot topics we are looking at this moment,” he explains.

Television

The television industry is progressing steadily with green initiatives, albeit after a late start. Most FTA networks started looking seriously at sustainability in late 2007, coinciding with the announcement of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) scheme. Seven, Nine and Ten don’t fall under the scheme’s requirements for mandatory emissions reporting, although this may change when the NGER’s first reporting year, which began in July 2008, enters into its second and third year.

For Seven, however, the scheme itself was enough to kick-start an independent audit of its energy use and gas emissions. Tim McDonald, general manager of program operations, says the network has chosen to adopt green policies in line with NGER’s mandatory and optional requirements, with a draft policy going to the network’s board for approval this year. Seven will also be moving out of its Epping site in Sydney to an “environmentally managed” 4.5 star-rated building at Redfern.

At Channel Nine, Scott Soutar, station manager for Sydney, says the network has been running an “Energy Action Savings Plan” since 2007 which primarily deals with energy efficient purchasing decisions and management systems at the network. “This translates to the energy efficient new fit outs across the station, with sensor-driven fluorescent lighting systems and sensor-driven water use in staff facilities,” he says.

But it’s Ten which seems to have made the most co-ordinated effort in the fight against climate change under Kate Pounder, its sustainability manager. In 2007/08, Ten’s carbon footprint was 22, 951 tonnes of “carbon dioxide equivalent” – an amount the network has committed to reducing by 30% by 2020 (Ten has already achieved an 11% reduction).

The network’s environmental action plan is detailed on its “Making your mark” website – an environmental initiative designed to affirm its commitment to sustainability and inspire action among viewers. “I don’t think you have any credibility in putting environmental messages on air if you haven’t done the hard yards yourself. If your company isn’t actually committed to it and you haven’t done all the things you’ve asked audiences to do, how can they take you seriously?” says Pounder.
However, the networks aren’t the only – or necessarily the biggest – polluters in the TV industry.

Production companies use huge amounts of energy to produce TV shows. One of the bigger production houses, Fremantle Media which makes Australian Idol for Ten, has “no specific initiatives or guidelines that are substantial enough to discuss in detail”, according to a company spokesperson.
Then there’s the increase of plasma screen TVs in Australian homes.

According to a spokesperson for the Consumer Electronics Suppliers Association, LCD-screen televisions and traditional ‘CRT’ sets use roughly the same amount of power, whereas plasma screen TVs tend to consume more energy due to their larger size.

Currently there are no plans for government regulation on energy saving technologies in TV sets, but CESA claims the efficiency of plasma and LCD TVs are increasing, especially with the introduction of mandatory energy-rating labelling this month. An example is Panasonic’s Eco PDP Viera plasma TV, featuring power-saving functions and an automatic standby, or Sony’s five-star energy rated Bravia WE5 LCD range.

Also worth considering is the amount of CO2 emitted when TV sets are manufactured. In 2008, Sony worldwide released 1.84 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; 0.2 million less than 2007. The company has a target of reducing its emissions by 7% from its 2000 levels in 2010. Panasonic has also made a commitment to reduce its CO2 emissions across all manufacturing sites via a clean factory accreditation system to evaluate measures implemented by all its factories.

Radio

Radio’s move to digital broadcasting may have environmental benefits on top of an enhanced listening experience. Joan Warner, chief executive officer of Commercial Radio
Australia, says: “Digital radio is much more spectrum efficient than analogue radio, where each service
needs its own frequency. “With digital radio broadcasters, you share
transmission infrastructure such as multiplexes, transmitters and use a single antenna.”

But it’s not all good news. While a digital frequency may be more efficient to run, digital radios themselves consume significantly more energy than analogue receivers – at least four times more than a traditional analogue set, according to a United Kingdom Energy Savings Trust report published two years ago.

While the amount consumed is a small proportion of household energy usage, digital’s roll out across homes, offices and car stereos makes it a significant issue. Graeme Redman, managing director of digital radio manufacturer Pure Australasia, admits digital sets consume more energy than analogue radios, but adds the type of speaker used may have more bearing on energy usage than the receiver itself.

Pure currently has a number of products that meet the UK Energy Savings Trust standard and are working towards eventually having all of their products Energy Savings Trust accredited. “Where possible, we have reduced the power of the decoding chip with each new generation of digital radios, so the next generation uses less power than the last,” says Redman.

At the radio networks responses to the climate- change challenge are varied. While Macquarie Radio Network declined to comment, saying “it’s hard to determine (the network’s) overall strategy”, DMG is still in the early stages of a sustainability action plan. Gareth Aldis, human resources manager at DMG, says the network held the first meeting last month of its “corporate social responsibility group” and its targets are still in the infancy stage. “The biggest impact or waste item we had is electricity in the radio stations. We have a system of measuring and monitoring electricity and have been doing a lot of things to improve our usage ... but (we) don’t have official policies on them,” he says.

The Austereo Group is slightly ahead of the curve, having completed an independent green audit two years ago and recently installing energy saving devices at its new Melbourne headquarters. Geraint Davies, chief operating officer at Austereo, says the audit identified travel as a key potential for energy savings in the network, leading management to roll out web cams to prevent excessive travelling for meetings.

The company has also trialled green electricity in the past (“but with the way it’s currently priced, it’s not efficient commercially to do that,” says Davies) and is currently investigating installing smart metering into all of its premises.

Online

Scrutiny of the online industry’s environmental impact has stepped up recently – most notably Google’s mauling in the international media earlier this year. Reporting on a Harvard study, the UK’s The Sunday Times claimed two Google searches on a desktop computer generated the same amount of CO2 as boiling a kettle – a claim later refuted by the study’s author, physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, who said he never mentioned Google in his research, but was referring to the CO2 output of running websites in general. The story begs the question: in an age of green hyper-awareness, do digital companies and their carbon footprint fall under greater criticism than other mediums?

Perhaps they do for a good reason. According to the Gaia Partnership, a basic national buy of banner ads on one of Australia’s top search engines – one that delivers 700,000 views a day – pumps 7 tonnes of CO2 a week into the atmosphere. “The issue with the internet is not the delivery mechanism where I send it to your computer,” says Gaia’s Sewell. “It’s more around all the storage for that data ... all the things that sit behind that delivery mechanism is massive, and you’ve also got the issue of how do get through to someone in that environment? You’ve got to bombard them, which uses more energy. Currently 5% of all electricity consumed in the United States goes into server farms. The internet is eating up a lot of power.”

Google and Yahoo!7 are aware of the high amount of energy consumed by data servers. Both make claims regarding their own facilities’ green credentials. Justin Baird, Google’s Sydney-based “Innovationist” says the company’s data centres are 50% more energy-efficient than the industry standard and use 80% less electricity. Yahoo!’s global office is committed to a 40% reduction in the “carbon intensity” of its data centres by 2014. However, the carbon footprint of their data services is unknown.

Sewell believes the key to lessening online’s carbon footprint in Australia is the use of renewable sources of energy, a point Google is well aware of. “Renewable power is a part of Google’s publicly declared goal of being carbon neutral across the company,” says Google’s Baird.
“We have patented novel solutions such as a water-based data centre that incorporates sea- based electrical power generation and sea water cooling units (the patent was only approved last year).

Our philanthropic arm Google.org has invested $US45m to date in companies researching renewable energy technologies, and we have a dedicated internal engineering team focused on these efforts as well. Initially, the project will focus on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, and enhanced geothermal systems.”

For online publisher Ninemsn, environmental sustainability is an issue closer to home. According to HR manager Josie Gosling, the company is involved in a number of green programs in the office, including a recycling and waste-reduction scheme, the Australian Square Water Consumption Reduction program and a “switch-off” initiative which urges all employees to switch off desk and office lighting after business hours to ensure energy efficiency.

Outdoor and DM

The Australian outdoor industry is considered too small a player to fall under any carbon- reporting scheme, including the NGER Act. Instead, outdoor companies have formed varying approaches to the green issues with companies such as the Eye Group conducting an independent audit in line with holding company Network Ten’s commitment to sustainability practices. Janine Wood, marketing director at Eye, says it’s too early to draw any conclusions from the report, although the company is “undertaking energy-saving and cost-saving initiatives around outdoor lighting where possible” and is in the process of creating a taskforce to implement green initiatives.

Elsewhere, outdoor and point-of-purchase company Ooh!media says it is committed to reducing its carbon footprint. The company is in the process of converting all of its large-format signs to Green Power – an ongoing process which would cut up to 60 tonnes of CO2 from its footprint next year. Ooh!Media has also introduced a LED lighting system which consumes 90% less power than fluorescent tubes, and created mobile schedules that reduces the energy consumption of its mobile fleet by 33% (emission control technology for vehicles is currently being reviewed by the company).

However, according to Helen Willoughby, chief executive of the Outdoor Media Association, most of the industry’s green efforts are focused on the recycling of billboard and outdoor advertising skins. All members of the OMA partner with the Overseas Disaster Recovery Service by sending used skins to various disaster regions around the world for reuse. “We’ve sent a number of pallets, each containing hundreds of skins to the Victoria Bushfire recovery unit, and we’ve also sent many hundreds overseas,” says Willoughby. “We’ve been working with the Overseas Disaster Recovery Service for 18 months and have had skins go to Soweto, Pakistan, Fiji, anywhere they can be used for temporary shelter or to cover farm equipment.”

For the direct marketing industry, environmental sustainability has long been an issue – albeit focused more on wastage with direct mail than energy usage and CO2 emissions. According to Australia Post figures, promotional mail makes up 15% of the total volume of mail last year – about 840 million items.

Melina Rohan, director of corporate and regulatory affairs at the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), says Australian businesses have adopted carbon offset paper, as well as paper sourced from sustainability managed and harvested forests. However, every direct marketing channel still has an environmental impact to balance with the bottom line. “On one side, there are issues to be managed with the sourcing and production of paper... on the other, electronic communications impact on the environment too due to the energy consumption of computer servers,” says Rohan.

In response, ADMA issued Environmental Guidelines for the Australian Marketing Industry in 2008, alongside an online environmental planning tool and policy generator. “(In the guidelines) areas that have the potential to significantly reduce the DM industry’s environmental footprint are tackled, including what actions can be taken in the workplace environment, as well as the instructions on how to best procure paper and most respected certifiers of paper products,” says Rohan. “Guidance is included on ensuring that direct marketers only make environmental claims that can be supported and are not misleading.” ADMA will be establishing an environmental taskforce in the future to monitor future issues in environmental practices.

For all media – be they at the cutting edge or lagging behind – when it comes to sustainability, there is plenty still to be done.
|