In the financial year 2013-14, we improved the carbon efficiency of our print media, but digital efficiency has reduced. We lowered total carbon generation by less than 1%, reduced water consumption of our print sites by 4% and upped our sustainable paper supply to 98%. The total amount of waste we generated went up by 4% and there was a 39% increase in emissions from international air travel, which was a result of our expansion into the US and Australia and our coverage of foreign news. You can read more about our operational footprints here, introduction, carbon footprint, resources footprint, waste emissions.
Engagement
This year we have concentrated on highlighting the wider social and environmental impacts of our operations internally, by introducing key performance indicators (KPIs) for members of our board (link to performance section). They include carbon efficiency of our digital and print media, as well as the sustainability of our waste and procurement practices.
Procurement
With the help of a new system, we are taking a more strategic approach to procurement, looking beyond our immediate responsibilities, tracking back down the supply chain to check the provenance of what we are buying. For example, our risk and information security team can use the new system to do due diligence assessments on our suppliers. We held values workshop for our procurement category managers, which means we can now start to prioritise suppliers, based on their sustainability risk (human rights, environmental respect and security of supply). We also hosted our first print supplier sustainability day to look at ways in which we can do more to address sustainability together throughout the print supply chain. You can read our conference report here.
Our print operations continue to work to be lean, efficient and resilient. After a restructure, staff completed a cross-skills training programme designed to protect operational continuity. They also managed to improve carbon efficiency, maintain zero waste directly to landfill and increase sustainable sourcing of resources. Better building management has also helped to reduce energy consumption. But total waste generation increased.
Business
We now have offices in the UK, America and Australia. As the business changes and grows, these buildings are being used in many different ways and we have to respond to these changes. For example, the rise in popularity of Masterclasses means we are using Kings Place more and more in the evenings and the weekends, which increases energy use. We have improved the way in which we manage the buildings and monitor energy consumption so we can adapt to these changes and, as a result, we have been able to reduce energy usage at Kings Place.
Our enterprise technology department has introduced a new digital network in Kings Place, which has not only increased reliability and efficiency, but also helps us to reduce our footprint and decrease annual running costs. The network system was only acquired after significant research was done to find a quality product that was resilient and enduring, as well as efficient.
Digital
We now have a global audience of 100 million unique monthly users so our digital operations focus on being efficient, scalable and light of foot. The web system team have used third party cloud IT servers more effectively and introduced new IT hardware in both of our data centres (servers, storage and network connections) to improve capacity, utilisation and energy efficiency. But server hardware is only a small part of our wider digital footprint. Our use of the internet infrastructure (cables, switches and routers), access networks (modems, phone masts) and the consumption of our content on customer devices is responsible for 98% of our digital emissions – the growing demand and requests of our customers is driving up emissions.
You can read a paper here, published in the Journal of Digital Journalism and produced in collaboration with the University of Bristol and Stephen Wood. Using the Guardian as a case study it examines the ethical implications of digital media emissions for journalists and media organisations.
We still have a lot to do to raise awareness of the impact that digital media has on our environment - for example, at the moment, getting energy or carbon data from our digital suppliers is highly problematic. We believe that the complex and dispersed nature of producing digital products is hampering our progress in that area. So our next step will be to design better tools to help internal decision makers understand how their choices affect carbon efficiency and help them to think beyond just improving the performance of our own hardware.
