There is something present in all our lives that adds 30% to our carbon emissions every single year. Can you guess what it is?
The answer, as you probably guessed, is advertising. Research from Purpose Disruptors looks at how much extra stuff is produced and consumed each year as a consequence of advertising and adds up all the associated carbon emissions from that stuff. What results is a calculation of the climate impact of advertising, and the numbers are terrifying.
In 2022, advertising in the UK was responsible for 208 million tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of an extra 30% on the UK’s total territorial carbon emissions.
As the world comes to terms with the rising crises of plastics pollution, global climate change and ecological collapse, a new common sense is emerging that consumerism is laying waste to our planet. Corporate advertising, which aims to manufacture the needs, wants and desires among us for more and more purchases is a key part of the economics of consumption – and needs to be challenged.
Consuming ourselves to death
Every year in the UK, 2 million tonnes of electronic waste goes to landfill, and yet Black Friday ads appear as an annual reminder to buy more and buy new. One quarter of items in the average Briton’s wardrobe have never been worn. That’s £200 a year wasted on rags we don’t even wear, and yet ads for fast- and ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein are common on out streets. Car brands such as Ford, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan, Audi, Fiat and Citroen spend around £25 million on out-of-home ads annually, even as local councils aim to reduce car use to lower air pollution.
The use of sophisticated advertising techniques to turbo-charge consumer spending is now a regular feature of our economy. Through these methods, the doctrine that consumption leads to fulfilment has become entrenched. As consumption levels rise, more of the Earth’s resources have been extracted and exploited to provide increasing quantities of products. At the end of their use, these products are then discarded, buried or burnt – polluting our land, waterways and atmosphere. Recycling levels have been unable to keep pace with production.
The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2050, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. Globally, populations of birds, mammals, amphibians, fish and reptiles have declined in number by 60% on average between 1970 and 2014. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in October 2018 that we have just 12 years to limit global warming to an average of 1.5C; calling for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”
Increasingly, companies are even playing to the environmental concerns of the public to continue the doctrine of consumption as a solution. Electric vehicles are a case in point. They are sold and marketed on their environmental credentials as zero tailpipe emission vehicles, and yet their production relies on large amounts of metals like lithium and copper, often extracted at the expense of people and planet.
At the heart of these ads is the myth of ‘ethical consumption’: that the problems caused by consumption can be solved by further consumption.
The electricity costs of out-of-home advertising
Increasingly, paper billboards are being replaced with digital screens. At the same time, ad companies are installing thousands of smaller (“six-sheet”) digital screens in towns and cities across the country. These are often seen in bus shelters, or free-standing on pavements.
Each six-sheet consumers the equivalent electricity of three average UK homes, or 11,500 kWh in a year. A larger digital billboard can use as much electricity as 11 UK homes.
This is not a small issue. There are 14,560 digital screen of all sizes in the UK. Ad company Clear Channel owns 3600 six-sheets in the UK, and 450 digital billboards. Rival company JCDecaux owns 1400 six-sheets and 350 billboards. And the number is always growing, by around 3% per year.
In a climate crisis and cost of living crisis, can we really afford to be wasting so much energy on advertising?
Billboards and inequality
Much outdoor advertising is situated next to or near roads, thereby maximising the number of people passing by each day. The value of a billboard is to a large extent based on the level of traffic that will see its messages. A consequence of this is that outdoor ad locations are highly correlated with higher than average levels of air pollution. Accordingly, people living near outdoor ads are exposed to that air pollution.
Case study: Bristol
In addition to the impacts of consumer messaging, many residents in Bristol have expressed concerns that fundamentally billboards and their adverts reduce the aesthetic character of our communities. Harry McPhilimy from the St Werburghs Neighbourhood Association explained, “We’re campaigning to rid the area of these giant advertising hoardings because they are out of scale, attract fly-tipping, fly-posting and tagging to create a negative unfriendly environment. We want to build an attractive, human scale environment.”
Space for change
The winds of change are blowing. More and more people around the world are waking up to the harm caused by advertising, and outdoor advertising.
In 2007, the Mayor of Sao Paulo in Brazil introduced a ban on all outdoor advertising classing it as ‘visual pollution’. The French City of Grenoble also banned outdoor advertising in 2015 – replacing the adverts with trees and community noticeboards.
In October 2022, the House of Lords published the In Our Hands report on the role of behaviour change in achieving net zero. The role of advertising is explicitly mentioned in the report as a “powerful influence on consumer behaviour on a large scale” and the authors call for “measures to regulate advertising of high-carbon and environmentally-damaging products.”
Similarly, the United Nations Environment Programme, recommends that national governments implements measures to regulate advertising of carbon intensive transportation modes like flying, and selected high-carbon foods such as meat, dairy products and certain types of fish. Advertising, the UNEP report notes, fuels material consumption to meet needs that “might be better met through alternative and less climate-damaging means.”
Huge industries of creative talent are currently being harnessed to produce marketing messages for new goods and services. As environmental concerns mount, it is prudent to ask, where are the spaces for alternative messages? Where can we find the air time to create a new story for our cities, stories that champion positive social and environmental ideas rather than more purchases? If advertising spaces are only sold to companies with the most money, how can we curtail the power of consumer messages over our lives, our wellbeing and the planet?
it’s not simply greenhouse gases that cause climate change, it’s our consumer lifestyle that causes the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Until we end consumerism and the rampant advertising that drives it, we will not solve the climate crisis.
Erik Assadourian
What can you do?
There are lots of ways that you can help create ad-free cities where you live.
You can join your local Adblock group. Adblock groups are our network of volunteers who work in their local area to stop new billboards and lobby councils for change.
Wherever you live you can object to planning applications for new billboards. This is hugely important to hold the line against new screens. One local Adblock group in Bristol has stopped over 50 new billboards being installed.
Local councils have powers to control what kind of adverts are displayed on advertising sites they own, such as bus stop posters. If you think it’s crazy to see adverts for cars on bus stops, then take action! Contact your councillor today and ask for an ethical advertising policy where you are.