Guide to sustainable digital communications

1.1 Is environmental sustainability a core value of your digital communications strategy?

Tip: Embed sustainability in all your digital communications plans and agenda.

2.1 Does your communications/marketing team know about the digital carbon footprint of your organisation’s online communications?

Tip: Share this guide with your communications/marketing team and watch this workshop on digital carbon emissions. Discuss the actions you can take. For example, you can begin by measuring your website emissions, as these can have a large impact on your organisation’s carbon footprint.

Tip: To find out more, you can share these digital carbon calculators with your team:

• Carbon Clicks – Considerate Digital
• Website Carbon – Wholegrain Digital

3.1 Is your website designed/optimised to have a low-carbon impact?

Tip: Look at information and tools by companies such as Considerate Digital and Wholegrain Digital.

3.2 Do you communicate about your website’s sustainability performance? Is it reviewed annually?

Tip: Consider adding Website Carbon’s badge to your website to highlight its low-carbon impact, as shown in the footer of Edinburgh Science’s The NetZeroToolkit.

Tip: Include specific mention of your website’s sustainability goals in your sustainability policy.

3.3 Do you mitigate your website emissions?

Tip: Images and videos are often the main culprits of high-emission websites.

• Use fewer images and videos (if using embedded images, see Section 6. Video).
• Use tools such as tinypng to compress images or convert them to WebP format, unless your content management system or a plugin does this for you.
• Keep hi-res versions of images available offline ready to send to media outlets.
• Read Considerate Digital’s guide on images.

Tip: Use a hosting provider that utilises 100% renewable energy – the Green Web Foundation contains a comprehensive database of web hosts with a commitment to using green energy.

Tip: Read Considerate Digital’s knowledge guide. You can also get in touch with them directly as they provide website audits, strategic planning and custom website development to make websites more accessible and sustainable.

3.4 Do you consider your organisation’s digital carbon footprint when posting content on the website?

Tip: Based on the resources shared above we recommend embedding digital emissions in your sustainability policy or writing a policy for your organisation’s digital footprint.

4.1 Do you consider the carbon footprint of your emails?

Tip: Many of us send and receive hundreds of emails a day and even though emails generally produce fairly low emissions, we encourage you to undertake good housekeeping on your inbox. For example, delete emails you have taken action on or no longer need, file necessary emails into folders rather than keeping them in your inbox and, overall, keep volumes to a minimum, which might mean unsubscribing from some of those lists you’re no longer interested in.

Although a little old now, this article from The Carbon Literacy Project is a great read: The Carbon Cost of an Email.

4.2 Do you consider the digital footprint of images or documents sent as attachments or of a branded footer in the emails you send?

Tip: We recommend that you do not use unnecessary images, including a branded footer, in your emails as they contribute to your digital emissions. Only send images as attachments when necessary. It is generally best practice to share a link to platforms such as Dropbox or Google Drive, especially for large files. Alternatively, send them via a file transfer platform such as WeTransfer. Do remember to remove images and videos that are no longer needed from your folders on Dropbox and/or Google Drive.

When it comes to hosting images on a website for public downloading, please first refer to section 3.3 of this document. If your organisation chooses to do this, consider providing user guidelines. Consider removing or archiving images that are used infrequently and encourage users to download only what they need.

4.2 Do you send email newsletters to your members or customer base?

Tip: As noted above, individual emails produce little carbon in comparison to other communications activities, but let’s consider the global volume. Statista says that ‘in 2022, there were an estimated 333 billion e-mails sent and received daily around the world’. It may be worthwhile to look into ways to reduce the carbon emissions of your email campaigns. Try out EcoSend’s carbon calculator to get an idea of your newsletter’s carbon footprint.

5.1 Do you consider the digital emissions of your social media output?

Tip: Unfortunately, there’s no tool yet to help you understand these emissions from an organisational point of view as there are so many variables. Sometimes defining your approach will be about finding the right balance between your communications and your digital carbon footprint. Even if it doesn’t always result in the most environmentally sustainable option, it’s important to be aware of and to consider the emissions your communications activities are producing.

If you’d like to gain some understanding of social media emissions, you can try the Social Carbon Footprint Calculator, if you wish. Be aware that it looks at personal use and the results are best viewed as estimates only.

• Social Carbon Footprint Calculator – Compare the Market NB: Opt to stay on the Australian site to reach this content.

5.2 Are you strategic with how much content you are posting to mitigate digital emissions while ensuring sufficient promotion of news/events?

Tip: Know your audience and the best platform(s) to reach them.

Be selective about how often you post; sometimes posting once (at the right time for your audience) will produce less emissions and have a greater audience impact than several posts.

Depending on the type of post and what you are trying to communicate, one image may be sufficient (eg you don’t need to post multiple images/a gallery/a carousel).

5.3 Are you strategic about the type of content you are posting to mitigate digital emissions?

Tip: Static images produce less emissions than video. Be considerate about when you utilise video content, ensuring it is the most effective way of promoting specific content.

6.1 Do you use a provider, like Vimeo, to share your audio and video content?

Tip: Don’t host your own audio and video content; always use a provider, eg Vimeo or YouTube. Streaming is highly optimised by video and audio providers and platforms, as it costs the provider money if these processes are inefficient.