Sustainably speaking
How to make your comms more planet friendly
As a newly B Corp certified business, we’ve been thinking long and hard about the impact words have. And the answer’s bigger than you might imagine – from the tangible costs in terms of energy to the consumer behaviour they drive.
So, when it comes to running a more environmentally friendly business, how do you talk the talk?
Consider your digital carbon footprint
We don’t often think of our digital communications as carrying a carbon footprint – but the servers, network and devices that store and display our web pages, social media posts and newsletters are very real, physical, energy-hungry entities.
The cumulative carbon cost of social media is significant. The combined use of ten social media platforms in 2021 accounted for 0.61% of the world's emissions – roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of Malaysia.
We’re not suggesting your brand needs to fall silent across digital channels – but a more mindful and considered approach to posting helps to keep messages more impactful, ensuring that, at the very least, they’re “worth” the environmental cost.
The way your website loads and displays content can also be mitigated to improve its environmental impact. See where you’re currently sitting with an instant report from Digital Beacon – a free tool which allows you to view the carbon footprint of any URL.
Encourage mindful consumption
Consider the language you use when it comes to winning sales. Are you whipping up excessive urgency? Encouraging hurried purchases with language that centres around scarcity or pressurised, time-limited offers? Are you courting overconsumption, with deals that promise value but deliver an unnecessary surplus?
In a competitive commercial landscape, it’s tempting to use every trick in the book to try to get sales over the line. But this kind of pushy, cortisol-spiking language is starting to lose its appeal and impact. Ethically positioned brands are beginning to publicly reject this high pressure strategy. They’re doing things differently – and standing out as a result.
The classic example of this comes from the now iconic “Don’t buy this jacket” campaign from Patagonia – but many other brands including Allbirds (who actually raised their prices on the biggest sale day of the year!) have also taken a public stand against mass consumerism and environmental impact of Black Friday.
Clearer comms, fewer returns
Up to 24 million metric tons of CO2 emissions are attributed to ecommerce returns each year. Clearer product descriptions (ideally incorporating customer reviews that give insight into aspects like fit and sizing etc) can be a game changer when it comes to return rates – something which has the capacity to dramatically improve your environmental impact.
You can also review your comms to ensure that you’re clearly communicating with your customers when it comes to reducing the environmental impact of their purchase after they’ve parted with their money.
Letting buyers know how to correctly recycle different components of your product, for example, could have a big impact on the ultimate life cycle impact of your product. Similarly, clearly signposting them to any verified reselling opportunities via schemes that you run has a positive impact on your customer experience as well as the planet.
As a B Corp business, we’re committed to reducing our environmental impact, at the same time as delivering a better experience to our clients.