When discussing the topic of corporate environmental sustainability, very few companies mention the impact on the environment when using marketing communications as a corporate marketing tool. The carbon footprint generated by "marketing communication" refers to the marketing communication methods commonly used by enterprises, such as personal selling, public relations (such as publishing press releases, columns, corporate sponsorship, exhibitions, seminars, etc.), direct marketing (such as through Greenhouse gas emissions caused by direct one-to-one communication with customers through mail, telephone communication, online mail, etc.), promotional activities, advertising and other activities.
However, because it is impossible to accurately measure the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the above activities with instruments, life cycle assessment and carbon footprint are often used as two ways to measure the impact of activities or products on the environment.
Life cycle assessment of marketing communication tools(Life Cycle Assessment of marketing communications)
Life cycle assessment refers to quantifying the environmental impact of the entire product or service supply chain, including the stages of raw material production, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal.
Stanford University Jeremy. Professor Fudi recently mentioned in a sustainable brand training conference that the focus of life cycle assessment can be divided into five levels:
1. Describe the manufacturing background of the product
2. Identify the most important environmental impacts in the supply chain
3. Establish baseline data as a basis for subsequent improvements
4. As a reference for product development or process improvement
5. Support product certification
The international ISO organization has developed a series of life cycle assessment standards (ISO 14040-14049) to provide enterprises with reference. The life cycle assessment includes steps such as determining the subject matter, collecting data, calculating impact intensity, and final interpretation. Once the life cycle assessment results reveal which categories have higher environmental impacts, companies can start to reduce their environmental impacts.
Before conducting a life cycle assessment of marketing activities, an independent life cycle assessment must be conducted for each product or service’s marketing method. Therefore, the approach is highly complex, and it is speculated that only a few companies will adopt the life cycle assessment method to measure the environmental impact caused by marketing activities.
Since it is not easy to use life cycle assessment to measure the environmental impact caused by marketing activities, only quantifying greenhouse gases in life cycle assessment projects will be a relatively simple method and can still achieve the purpose of identifying major emissions and reduction baselines. .
marketing communication toolscarbon footprint
Organizational carbon footprint refers to "revealing the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions of an organization in a certain year", while product carbon footprint refers to "from a life cycle perspective, establishing the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the complete life cycle of a product/service." Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas mainly caused by human activities, and its quantification method is simpler and less expensive than life cycle assessment, carbon footprint has attracted great attention from many environmentally conscious companies.
According to Andrew Winston (author of Green Recovery), competition among software for calculating carbon footprints on the market is fierce. Here are several software names (fee required) for calculating the carbon footprint of marketing activities:
1.CO2 Counter
2. Eco Publicité
3. Noughtilus
4. Marketing Carbon Calculator
In addition, free calculation software available online can also help calculate the carbon footprint generated by different marketing activities, such as:
1. events
2. online media(online media)
3. packaging
4. In-factory printing orbusinessprinting in-house or commercially
5. vehicle transportation(vehicle travel)
6. Website use(website use)
Although there are still doubts about the accuracy of the free online calculation software, and it cannot perform customized calculations for products/services, it can at least give companies a rough understanding of the methods and complexity of carbon footprint quantification.
Based on the above, perhaps it would be the most efficient way to entrust a professional consultant to quantify the company's marketing activities. The author also speculates that the carbon footprint of corporate marketing activities will also become a future trend.
– Reference source: Peter Korchnak’s column
– Translated by Plastics Industry Technology Development Center
– For reference only, please refer to the original text.
