When it comes to reporting progress, a company’s greenhouse gas emissions are classified into three scopes.
Since 2019 all electricity sourced and paid for by Ocean is 100% green from sustainable suppliers.
The IMAX’s lighting has been upgraded from halogen strip light to 48,000 LED’s. 77% on energy efficiency, removing more than 100 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.
As of April 2022, we have now implemented further screen turn offs during quieter hours so we can now say that none of our screens (apart from Piccadilly Lights) will operate on a 24-hour basis.
Our main focus areas on the roadmap to achieving our goals in line with the Paris Agreement, are electricity and procurement. Below is how we plan to achieve these goals.
Ocean is a business that consumes energy as part of our day to day operation in our offices and to obviously power our screens.
We are proud that since 2019 all electricity sourced and paid for by Ocean is 100% green from sustainable suppliers. As you can imagine, that’s a large amount of electricity.
We limit hours of operation and voluntarily reduce brightness to below permitted levels and in more sensitive locations override our technology to deliver brightness levels lower than those dictated by our ambient light sensing equipment.
Ocean as a policy, do not operate our screens on a 24/7 basis, instead most of our large format screens are powered down between 23:00hrs and 06:00hrs, and Ocean’s small format networks between 03:00hrs and 06:00hrs. Ocean where possible places a self-imposed limit on brightness to override the integrated ambient lighting sensing systems.
This benefits our neighbours, the environment and our wildlife.
Ocean’s procurement access’s our supplier’s environmental processes to ensure a multi-faceted approach to sustainability that strives to optimise our procured technology, educate our suppliers, reduce our corporate waste, and to stay actively involved to reduce our environmental footprint throughout all processes and in our eco-system.
Ocean continually review our environmental practices.
The move to LEDs is a huge shift in sustainability and the green credentials for Ocean and the wider DOOH market. Recognising the demand on energy sources, the typical LED burns about 10% of their energy as heat and the rest as light; as opposed to their predecessor, the incandescent light bulb, which burns about 98% of their energy as heat and 2% as light.
Ocean’s has chosen the world leader in LED technology as our preferred supplier. Part of this selection process was a firm commitment to exacting environmental and sustainable criteria, we have a partner who we are confident delivers the most efficient form of lighting commercially available today.
The technical commitment:
The sustainable commitment:
They also aggressively recycle all eligible office and industrial materials. Materials which are recycled as part of the manufacturing processes include;
The advertising industry is mobilising in response to the climate emergency. The Ad Net Zero initiative represents an industry-wide collaboration to curb emissions from advertising industry’s operations: including the ad production process, media planning and buying. This is delivered as part of a partnership between the Advertising Association, IBSA and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).
Their ‘Ad Net Zero’ report launched November 2020 calculated the operational emissions of the advertising industry to be 84,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and outlined a 5-step plan for organisations to reduce emissions.
Over 80 companies spanning brands, agencies, media owners, tech platforms and trade bodies have signed up to the Ad Net Zero initiative. As of December 2021, Ocean Outdoor are proud supporters of the Ad Net Zero group in order to help combat climate change within the industry and create a more sustainable future.
Visit adassoc.org.uk for more information.
Ad net Zero purposes action on five fronts:
Ocean are creating safe havens for species that can act as stepping stones for both flora and fauna across our cities.
We have identified 18 existing advertising locations across the UK that we are in the process of returning to nature. Creating habitats of native species to encourage the return of wildlife and act as educational focus points for schools in the area.
Our Dutch colleagues are introducing Bee and Butterfly Hotels. These Hotels can be constructed around the superstructure of Ocean’s existing large format advertising displays that have the land capacity to support the planting of wild-flowers to feed and sustain the bees and butterflies.
As part of our response to this crisis we are managing our sites land so that they positively contribute to biodiversity, particularly for pollinators
Such transformative action across the whole Ocean network is necessary to create ‘more, bigger, better and joined up’ habitats and ‘Making Space for Nature’.
From Autumn 2021
We launched our Drops in the Ocean initiative in November 2021. This advertising fund supports environmental charities by donating 2% of our annual reported revenue through DOOH space on our screens throughout the UK.
Read more about the charities we supported in 2022 and 2023.
In 2024, we are currently supporting six environmental charities; SolarAid, TreeAid, The Reef World Foundation, Everyday Plastic, Campaign for National Parks and Take the Jump.
Drops in the Ocean gives charities and causes a change to appear at scale across some of Oceans Group’s 8,631 plus premium DOOH advertising locations in 834 cities.
Find out more about the fund here.
In a media first for the out of home industry, when buying and planning campaigns across Ocean’s UK assets, agency partners will get to vote for which of the high potential projects a percentage of their ad spend will support.
The four projects are carbon coastal removal, turtle protection, plastic removal and coral protection. All the initiatives have been verified by the sustainability platform, Pinwheel, which supports the world’s most effective planet-saving initiatives.
Ocean’s position is informed by scientific evidence which shows that many carbon offset programmes have no environmental value and sadly do very little or nothing to mitigate global warming. According to research, 70% of the $2billion spent globally on carbon avoidance or removal projects has little to no impact – and sometimes even negative consequences.
In 2023, we began initiating more staff engagement through volunteering days. On World Ocean Day, we collected litter along the canal with support from the Canal & River Trust and volunteered at Wildfowl Wetlands Trust in Barnes on a separate occasion.