This is the eighth and final post in a series on improving the environmental sustainability of marketing communications. Previously: Measurement (in two parts); A model; Rethink; Reduce; Reuse; Recycle. Today: Replenish. A summary post to follow soon.
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The final phase in your effort to green-up your marketing communications program is Replenish. In Replenish, you recognize, acknowledge, and honor that the amount of energy and resources in the planet’s ecosystem is finite. You, then, must return to the ecosystem whatever energy or resources your marcom consumes.
In the marcom environmental sustainability improvement model, a sustained effort to go through the Rethink — Reduce — Reuse — Recycle chain must precede the Replenish phase. Replenish what you end up consuming after you’ve done everything you can in the model’s previous stages. In fact, the best method of replenishment is not to consume in the first place.
At the same time, because the model itself is a loop, after Replenish you must get back to the Rethink stage to figure out further improvements of your marcom’s environmental footprint.
As in the preceding phases of the model, measurement is key: you must know how much you consumed to know how much to replenish. That includes energy, materials, energy to produce materials, and any waste, by-products, or externalities produced.
Methods of Replenish
Carbon offsets are the most common method currently used by environmentally-minded (and many other) businesses.
“Offsets are typically achieved through financial support of projects that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the short- or long-term. The most common project type is renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, or hydroelectric dams. Others include energy efficiency projects, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, and forestry projects.” — Wikipedia
With offsets, you essentially purchase the reduction of greenhouse gases by the same amount that your marketing communications produced.
If used simply for PR purposes while continuing to do business as usual, offsets are more than controversial: they’re a wrong method of Replenish. That’s why the completion of the model’s preceding stages is so important! Once again, you can replenish your marcom’s energy and resource consumption by simply reducing its consumption.
A related way to replenish your marcom’s consumption is only purchasing renewable energy and materials. Many utilities offer renewable power programs, such as PGE’s Green Source or NW Natural’s Smart Energy, though often (as in the latter example) these are simply offset programs.
Sourcing your marcom from eco-certified suppliers can serve as another alternative way of replenishing your consumption. Examples include Chain of Custody certifications for printers or publishers, e.g. Forest Stewardship Council or Sustainable Forestry Initiative certificates; or website certification programs like Co2Stats.com, which buys “EPA-endorsed certificates showing that you are effectively powering the site with renewable energy from wind and solar farms”.
If you’re more into taking a broader, systemic view, you can follow Jeffrey Sachs’s advice and support organizations providing development aid to alleviate poverty in the Third World. While an interesting proposition, the issue is beyond this blog’s scope so I’ll leave it up to you to delve into it.
What methods do you use to replenish your marcom’s energy and resource consumption?
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Image credit: elvis_payne and fish 2000
