Know-How Exchange : Other

My apologies for the delayed follow-up on to your responses. They are greatly appreciated -- but it does seem like our industry does not have leadership in this area. Both of these recommendations are general in nature -- not specific to helping ad agencies make the transition to going green, both within our own office and with our clients and vendors in the execution of advertising.

Understood -- but you cannot eliminate the impact of digital media. The creation of servers, the power to generate them, the toxic waste they create when they are discarded must be added to the "footprint" we leave in our trail. Not to mention the volumes of waste created as a result of the production of marketing elements such as billboards, print ads, posters, etc. In this Wired blog entry by someone in the printed publication industry, they have determined that dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media. (https://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/12/are-dead-tree-m.html). It is not simple as moving everything to digital - although your suggestions are a small step in the right direction, they unfortunately reflect the confusion and naivete of the majority.

My question was prompted by my disappointment that the Sustainable Advertising Partnership has the right idea (https://www.sustainableadvertisingpartnership.org/index.html), but they do not appear to be active any longer. Such a voluntary coalition of ad agencies working together would have more influence and would help to make the process more efficient and effective for us all. I was hoping to learn of another similar organization taking a leadership role in our industry.

Yes, an individual company can take some steps, but this is a much more complicated and critical issue than most of us realize, and leadership and collaboration would help us all achieve greater success.