Being a sustainable digital marketing agency has always been important to The Marketing Optimist. It has been a challenge to work out what our footprint is, how to measure it so we can improve, and how we work towards becoming a net zero marketing agency.
So we are going on a journey to learn more about our activity and how we can reduce our impact on the world. As we learn more and improve, we’ll continue to post updates to our blog.
Our aim is to gain B Corp status
B Corp is seen as one of the more holistic accreditations for a sustainable business. Their benchmarks cover more than just environmental sustainability they also cover.
- Governance
- Workers
- Community
- Customers
- Disclosure – which ensures we work with other ethical businesses
We are in the early stages of moving towards a B Corp but so far we have a score of 52.7 which we are really proud of as that has been achieved with the processes we already have in the business.
Our aim is to be a fully accredited B Corp by October 2024.
Measuring our progress
We want to be as open about our failures as our successes and by doing that, encourage our clients and peers to improve their own sustainability too.
To measure our progress we’re going to split out different aspects of the agency so that we can highlight successes and places where we need to improve.
Remote and flexible working
Since the pandemic all our teams have worked remotely and will continue to do that. For times when we need to work together we have a co-working office in Leeds, which is in close proximity to the train station and public transport networks.
A recent study shows that remote working and shared spaces for office working can reduce carbon footprint by up to 54% over those businesses who work full time in offices.
Video meetings rather than physical meetings
95% of all our meetings are held using video meeting solutions, our in-house preference is Zoom, but we use other systems too. When we do need to hold face-to-face meetings, we endeavour to use public transport or carpooling, where possible.
Servers, website and email hosting
Being a sustainable digital marketing agency means we have to really look at our server and hosting providers, as they are by far the largest area of energy consumption within our operations. We don’t own any of our servers, which ensures that all the servers we utilise are powered with renewable energy and carbon-offsetting solutions where needed.
Our server suppliers are also applying improved software and hardware solutions to improve efficiency, reducing energy usage for their servers.
Reduction in print and promotional materials
Printed and promotion materials are kept to a minimum but where required utilise recycled or recyclable materials. We have recently moved to digital business cards using NFS technology to reduce the need for print.
In our event materials, we do not use giveaways such as pens, water bottles or other items with a high plastic content. Where possible our promotional items use recycled or recyclable elements.
We do not print any documents or files from our laptops and keep the use of notebooks to a minimum.
Next steps on our sustainability strategy
Our next step is to ensure that we get a measurement of the agency’s carbon footprint. Once we have that we will be able to work out how we can further reduce our impact on the world and find solutions to offset any carbon we can’t remove.
Sustainability is vital to us as an agency, our immediate community and the world as a whole.
We hope you’ll join us on our journey to improve our impact on the environment.
