Founder, Belinda Noble will be attending the #ClimateTalks Global Student Forum during Earth Day and interviewed by our students.
In 2021, Comms Declare commissioned an Australian survey across the creative industries and found that global warming is one of the main concerns for young people. Moreover, one in four young communications professionals say they have felt pressured to work for clients who contribute to increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
These people are employed by marketing, public relations and advertising agencies, but also research companies, management consultancies and in-house at large corporations and governments. Pre-COVID-19, Australian advertising agencies made $3.2 billion and produced at least 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Public relations and social manager at PR agency, The Bravery, Sian Henderson stated, “There’s many things in terms of advertising agencies and communication agencies and their roles to play. They’re literally the communicators between clients or businesses and the consumer audience, and other industry players, depending on who your client is. So there’s a huge responsibility there to make sure that we are communicating and educating and driving that awareness around climate change. In another sense, it’s just a fantastic opportunity: you’ve got the biggest issue of our time happening, and as communicators that sit in the middle, we are in a position where we can really be those people to educate our clients, and people on the other side, and consumers, to understand the issues around climate change, and how people can get involved.”
Agencies are also largely unaware of the emissions of their own operations. While most are practising sustainable procurement practices, less than half (43%) have formal emissions reduction policies or understand their own carbon footprint (39%).
To help drive positive behavioural change, Comms Declare has established an annual award to recognise advertising agencies which are proactively reducing their carbon footprint.
