As the COP27 climate summit draws to a close it is clear that the marketing industry needs to better understand its contribution to global warming. And that includes, probably above anything else, sustainable development of the tech we use.
At Anything is Possible not only do we help our clients with MarTech solutions, but we also develop and build digital assets and tools for them. We have recently redoubled our efforts to do so sustainably.
Recently the AIP Tech team have been focussing on our technology strategy for delivering truly transformational software assets for clients. This includes websites and apps as well as more bespoke services and tools. A key thread in our strategy is ensuring that our processes and deliverables are as sustainable as possible.
What do we mean by sustainable?
Well currently we have three key strands of sustainability that we focus on:
Business sustainability. Ensuring that the solutions we propose and the products that we build are focussed on helping our clients businesses be sustainable over the long term. This means focussing on long term objectives and truly transformational improvements.
Solution sustainability. Ensuring the technologies we build are done in such as was as to be easy to use, maintained and most importantly expand and grow. This focus involves us understanding our clients internal resource and skills and delivering solutions that fit and complement their existing resource. There is no point delivering an amazing piece of software if it can’t be used or maintained going forward by its intended recipients.
Then thirdly, but arguably most importantly, there is Environmental Sustainability, ensuring that what we deliver is as environmentally sustainable as possible.
It is part of the software developer’s trade that we are used to thinking in ever more abstract terms. Coupled with the trends over the last decade towards virtualisation, containerisation and cloud infrastructure, it is very easy to forget that what we are doing is still a manifestly physical thing. We are ultimately moving electrons, pooling them in flash drives and still in this day and age magnetising ferrous discs. All of this obviously uses energy and some of that energy production results in carbon emissions into our atmosphere.
As the scale of the internet and software continues to grow and transform society, so does its contribution to our global carbon emissions. Indeed it is estimated that the web today is responsible for approximately 4% of all emissions globally.
There are a number of steps developers can take proactively to minimise the energy footprint of websites and software. But most boil down to minimising required compute/processing and minimising the amount of data storage and transfer. The good news is that optimising for these also means delivering faster and more reliable software.
Anything is Possible has always operated a triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. True to that commitment going forward we are pledging to measure and model our tech solutions carbon footprint and minimise it where possible and offset where not. We are committed to delivering climate positive solutions across all our activities. Technology is no exception.
