How can digital signage support sustainability efforts?

Can digital signage support sustainability efforts? The short answer is, yes.

Although the two may seem at odds, when it comes to changing people’s behaviour it’s been proven time and time again to work.

Digital signage can support sustainability efforts and our article explains how and gives you tips for success.

Making the case for sustainability

Sustainability is a big and meaty subject and relies on two things: people caring about sustainability, and people behaving in a sustainable way. You need them to do both to be successful. Some people are predisposed not to care about it, and for others it can be all-consuming. The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.

To be successful in your sustainability efforts, you need to encourage people to care more about energy conservation, recycling, and reducing waste. You can’t do that in a one-off email. Digital signage can be used to stress the importance of sustainability. By regularly showing persuasive imagery – e.g. forest fires, floods, droughts, plastic pollution – people will constantly be reminded why things like the journey to ‘net zero’ is such a priority and cannot wait.

Showcase your sustainability progress

Let your employees/customers know what your sustainability targets are and how you’re achieving them. Showcasing your progress is an excellent way to keep people motivated and continuing with sustainable behaviours. For example, if you recently transitioned to a paperless office, you can let staff know that you’ve saved over 50,000 sheets of paper since implementing the policy.

Highlight success stories

You can engage your employees/customers/stakeholders through video testimonials that highlight innovative success stories. You may have recently hosted a zero-waste event that you would like to showcase. Alternatively, you could highlight members of staff who contributed towards green initiatives, such as replanting trees or leading eco-projects.

Share sustainability tips

You can encourage a mindset of collective effort by sharing sustainability tips and practices. This includes showing reminders to limit the number of documents employees print, encouraging staff/customers to recycle paper or cans, incentivising car sharing, and asking them to switch off computers/lights before they leave.

Make your digital signage as sustainable as it can be

There can be no argument that digital signage does indeed use energy, and most displays are manufactured in East Asia (and therefore requires shipping to the UK), but there are steps you can take to keep energy use and electronic waste and packaging to a minimum.

• Using LED rather than LCD screens: always opt for displays with LED technology or high energy efficiency ratings as these consume less power.

• Adjusting the screen brightness based on room conditions: displays only need to be on full power in situations where there is a lot of light. If that’s not the case, turn down the brightness, as this will reduce the amount of energy they use. If you have outdoor digital signage, make sure that you purchase displays that have a brightness auto-adjustment feature, so that when it’s darker the brightness will automatically reduce.

• Recycling electrical goods and packaging: if you’re about to retire your digital devices, send them to a nearby electrical waste recycling company. When you get new displays, buy good quality hardware that will last and minimise energy usage. Don’t forget to recycle the packaging.

• Purchasing hardware with a smaller carbon footprint: whilst it’s true that most digital signage hardware is produced in East Asia, not all of it is. Some hardware is manufactured in European countries like Turkey, which reduces some of the shipping required. If you’re buying enclosures, it is possible to have these made to order in the UK, thereby massively reducing the amount of energy/fuel used to transport it to your premises.

Reduce paper waste

Although digital signage does use energy, it has the advantage of not being a ‘one-hit-wonder’ like paper is. It’s a multi-purpose blank canvas that creates a huge amount of promotional space for lots of different teams/departments to use as they see fit. Rather than running off lots of posters, flyers etc. for each event, advertisement, or announcement you make – which involves harmful chemicals, waste production, and energy consumption – you can show lots of different information on screens instead.

If you’re interested in learning more about which hardware is the most sustainable, our outdoor, indoor, freestanding and kiosk enclosures (which are designed and built in the UK), or our own sustainability efforts, please just get in touch.