Dentsu UK&I Encourages Sustainability with ‘The Friday Switch’ for Earth Day 2022

Dentsu UK&I today reveals The Friday Switch, a shareable new initiative launching on Friday 22nd April to coincide with Earth Day 2022 that encourages the advertising group’s employees and clients, the industry and beyond, to switch their behaviour around food, energy and waste, to make remote working and home life more sustainable. 

Reducing emissions to tackle climate change is one of many aspects of life, work and leisure that is changing to reach the critical goal of halving global emissions by 2030. Dentsu believes everyone is part of that change and is committed to inspiring collective action. 

The majority of an individual's carbon footprint comes from how we heat our homes, what we eat and how we travel. In the UK, 40% of the country’s emissions come from households and with hybrid working here to stay, changing our behaviour and habits at home are crucial to ensuring the UK meets its legally binding net zero targets. 

The Friday Switch, created by dentsu creative agency, dentsuMB UK, highlights five positive actions people can take on Earth Day, and beyond.  

• Switch to renewables – reducing reliance on fossil fuels is the biggest way to reduce your carbon footprint. Changing to a green energy provider can cut your carbon emissions by up to 79%. 
• Switch to plant-based food – changing your diet is a simple and easy way to fight global warming - Beef requires 20 times more land and emits 20 times more global greenhouse emissions per gram of edible protein than common plant proteins, such as beans.
• Switch to recycling plastics and food waste – recycling and preventing food waste ensure that waste doesn’t go into landfills, which cause further environmental degradation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Consider increasing your recycling, reuse, or circular consumption, or seek out local, nature friendly or more durable products.
• Switch the camera off and go for a walk & talk meeting – not only is walking good for your physical and mental health, as you chat to your colleagues while strolling through the park, you even save a small amount of carbon by not using your camera!
• Switch off devices when not in use – Unplugging all the devices in your home, or turning them off standby at night, can save up to 60kg of CO2 emissions each year. That's the same as the emissions 30 trees would absorb in a year.

In addition, to demonstrate the steps they are taking and to help spread the word, bespoke email footers and profile pictures for use on social media and all virtual meeting platforms including Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack are freely available to download as part of the ongoing campaign – acting as conversation starter about the changes everyone can make to be more sustainable.

James Morris, dentsu CEO creative EMEA & UK said: “We know behaviour change can be hard, so we are using this campaign to engage people and remind them of small acts we all can make. Reminding people once a week that they can make a difference can help spark a movement at dentsu and beyond. We want to use the power of our platforms by changing our profile pictures every week to encourage our colleagues, partners and clients to make a switch. And if we’ve learned anything from Greta, it’s that Fridays can spark something big!” 

Leli Leitner and Coco Shellim, the dentsuMB creatives behind the campaign, added: “Net Zero commitments mean examining every source of CO2 emissions and with hybrid working here to stay, it highlights how our own personal behaviours and habits have to change when we’re working from home. That’s why we wanted to encourage people to make small sustainable changes when working remotely. We invite everyone to do this by using an unused medium that’s a great conversation starter on calls, where you not only show what changes you personally make, but also talk about the topic of sustainability at home with others.”

Dentsu has already made great strides in ensuring its buildings and business are as sustainable as possible, including being 100% powered by renewables since 2000.

As part of its industry leading social impact strategy, dentsu International recently announced it is the first global advertising agency network to implement Salesforce Net Zero Cloud to create greater accountability and transparency for its 2030 Social Impact strategy.

This builds on dentsu International’s track record of ambitious climate action, becoming the first in the industry to achieve RE100 accreditation for sourcing 100% renewable electricity and setting a 1.5 degree aligned science-based target for carbon emissions reduction. In October 2021, dentsu International became one of the first companies in the world to have its net zero target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. It includes a new deep decarbonisation target to reduce absolute emissions by 90% by 2040 across its entire value chain.