The face of business has drastically changed over the last 30 years. Even every month now, it could be argued that currents in the marketing world can have colossal shifts. It might be easy to think that todays world of marketing, with so much of it online, in emails, on the cloud, has no environmental footprint compared to the history of faxes, letters, and catalogues. 

In many ways, it could be argued that todays use of social platforms for businesses is far greener than reams of paper, which arguably also took a lot of electricity and resources to be printed and distributed. However, as we are all becoming more collectively aware of, it is of course not as simple as it seems. Generally the rule is, whatever is using a higher amount of data, will therefore create more of an environmental impact. For instance a one picture post with a caption will take up less data than a reel. The amount of people interacting and downloading with the content will also add to the environmental impact technically created by an account. The Internet is responsible for around 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a similar percentage that is produced by the global airline industry.

This is why we wanted to help make a difference, as we knew our passion can also have bad implications for the world we love. To offset our digital footprint, we have created our website to use as little data as possible, with no large media files that would use a large amount of data. We use renewable and world-class efficiency hosted servers that ensure the best possible environmental impact for our data hosting, the same that we put our clients onto. Whilst we wanted to ensure our own business could have the largest possible reach for current and potential clients, we didn't want to compromise on our values for the sake of a Facebook account. Maybe we will miss out on a few clients from operating this way, but what we stand for is more important.

Whilst social platforms are actually likely more green than the different marketing channels we used years before, we are big on minimalism here at Cradle Earth, and we don’t believe in using things for the sake of it. Wherever we can cut down on resources and power, we will. We narrowed down which socials were most important to us. As a marketing agency that isn’t mainly aimed at Gen Z, we knew Instagram was likely our most important bet. Then with the nature of our business conduction, we decided LinkedIn was absolutely necessary too. Our aim will be to continue to ensure our principles are upheld whilst using these platforms, avoiding unnecessary or superfluous posting. Not only that, but we have strong beliefs that the powers possible from social media, the change and communication available through these platforms, can often outweigh the negative impact that their use can have. We want to use our platforms not only as clear demonstrations of our business’s skills, but also to help add to the conversation (with cited and well resourced material) surrounding the planet. 

A lot of the power with environmental issues lies with the masses; with a huge company such as a social media platform, if many people make it clear they want that company to be more eco-aware and friendly, if there is a good amount of pressure then that does tend to lead to the company acting faster in becoming more sincerely green. This is another reason why we decided to restrict how many platforms we use. Maybe it will only make a small difference when it comes to the amount of energy we do use, but sometimes, its more about the message…