Despite their considerable promotional power, printed marketing materials like posters, leaflets and magazines are some of the world’s top pollutants. If you are a business that values the health of the environment, you should be thrilled that digital marketing presents a far greener way to promote your business.
It will take more green-conscious businesses like yours as well as education for the rest to move the needle towards a truly green future. To paint a picture of why a full migration away from printed marketing materials to digital marketing platforms needs to be expedited, we share facts and statistics on the advertising industry’s impact on the environment below.
- According to the Green Press Initiative, the paper and pulp industry is the fourth largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the United States. The World Counts environmental statistics and advocacy project says that, as things currently stand, the demand for paper (which businesses contribute towards massively with their advertising campaigns) is expected to double by 2030. It also estimates that Americans waste enough paper in a single year to build a 12-foot wall extending from New York to California.
- Paper is not the only costly resource in traditional advertising. Billboards, for example, incur a host of other environmental costs, such as the materials used to build them and the power required to light them up. This is not to mention the other major cost in print advertising, namely ink and cartridges. According to The Energy Collective, a factory that produces ink cartridges emits as much CO2 as 500 average North American homes.
These are pretty good reasons not to take out that full-page ad you’ve been contemplating and to stop the presses on those flyers you’ve been handing out for years. If you need any more convincing, it helps that digital is not only greener, but also cheaper. Furthermore, it has reliable metrics for measuring ROI, which print could simply never have.
What we have discussed above are compelling reasons why marketers must reconsider their dependence on paper for their advertising materials. Thanks to digital media, there are now far greener ways to promote your products and business.
WSI OMS is the perfect partner to manage your migration to a paperless marketing strategy and help you make a positive contribution to the health of the environment. Contact us today to discuss ways to craft a winning digital marketing strategy for your business.