The demand for digital media displays in commercial environments continues to grow. And whilst they’re broadly becoming more and more energy efficient, it’ll be no surprise to learn that there can be huge differences in operating efficiencies between different manufacturers. Atypically, the lower the capital cost of a display digital will mean that the operating costs, in terms of the energy they use, will be higher. And for large format, high brightness displays we’re talking hundreds of pounds per year difference between the best and worst.
Hardware production comes with a hefty carbon footprint, too and there’s not much we can do about that as end-users of the equipment. With the need to protect and preserve our planet an urgent issue, we think there’s an opportunity for the digital signage industry to make a positive difference by embracing carbon offsetting.
The average person’s carbon footprint in the UK is 6.5 tonnes (the equivalent of two full sized orcas) and, of course, a business’ footprint will be much larger, so it’s more important than ever to clean up our act. Putting in the work now, before it’s too late, will ensure we have a healthy planet for ourselves and others in the future.
What is carbon offsetting?
Innovation takes time. While manufacturers and industry improve their processes and materials, we can take action now by investing in projects and initiatives that work towards neutralising the carbon footprint of what we’re using in our digital projects. Offsetting essentially means that we invest in projects whose sole purpose is to consume the equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere to match what we’re adding through the indirect purchase of equipment and the operating costs over their lifetime, together with those generated at the end of a products’ life.
Some people have criticised carbon offsetting as little more than greenwashing. We don’t agree. While we create solutions to live and work in a net-zero way, we believe that carbon offsetting is a pragmatic solution to minimising our net emissions, provided it’s done professionally with an audit trail and contractual guarantees that give the certainty needed.
At Pixel, we want to ensure that the impact we and our client projects make on the planet is a positive one. The first port of call might seem simple – simply purchase more energy efficient displays – but we wanted to take it one step further and offer our clients the ability to offset the related carbon.
To achieve this, we’re working with our OEM manufacturing partners to understand the accurate picture of the carbon footprint of each digital display that we use in our projects, so that we can then build a model of the total CO2 output that a digital project will
generate. Once we know these figures (which will be unique to each solution) we’re working with EcoTree to offer our clients the option of purchasing carbon credits, in the form of managed forests. EcoTree’s tried and tested methodology allows you to see how many trees you need to plant in order to offset your carbon.
So, if the manufacturing, installation and running cost of a screen creates half a tonne of CO2 in the manufacturing stage, 1 tonne of carbon each year of operation and 250KG during recycling, EcoTree helps us calculate how many trees should be planted to cancel that out over 30 or 100 years of managed forest growth.
Thinking of sprucing up your digital estate but want to keep it as environmentally friendly as possible? We can help. Get in touch with us here!