Posted on 21st June 2021

Coffee & TV – A creative studio with sustainability at its heart

Coffee & TV is a renowned creative studio specialising in conception, direction, VFX, animation, design and colour grading. They’re also an albert carbon neutral supplier who have some ambitious net zero goals, so we just had to have a chat with them and find out how they plan to hit their targets.

Case Study, Culture & Capability, Sustainable Production

About Holly

We spoke to Holly Arnold, sustainability manager at Coffee & TV. Holly started out at Coffee & TV as an artist in her own right, training to be a CGI artist whilst being a runner, and it was in her role as a runner where she started to help reduce Coffee & TV’s impact. Eventually CEO Derek Moore asked if Holly wanted to be involved in getting the company B Corp Certified.

Holly worked in the environmental and community side of the B Corp assessment, and upon realising the environmental impact that the advertising and creative industries can have through art, the role stuck and she remained as the sustainability manager. A unique role in their sector.

B Corp Certification

During B Corp impact assessment, Holly and Derek were referred to albert and started looking at Coffee & TV’s carbon footprint using albert’s footprint report service (find out more here). As guided by the B Corp assessment, Coffee & TV began by changing their suppliers to those which are more sustainable.

Coffee & TV’s 2019 baseline year total footprint amounted to 94 tCO2e, and in 2020 they reduced it by 12.3% to 82.5 tCO2e.

As a company run on technology, it was important Coffee & TV’s studio was running on renewable energy straight away (through albert’s Creative Energy scheme), this change alone has the potential to reduce their impact this year by 40% – reducing their emissions to 49 tCO2e.

Coffee & TV's 2019-2020 footprint

Coffee & TV's 2020-2021 footprint

Coffee & TV & Covid

When the Covid pandemic hit, Derek and the board instructed a review of staff habits at home. As of March, Holly began measuring the personal carbon footprints of staff working from home.

Parameters included whether they drive, what they use as a regular mode of transport, what kinds of food they ate and their recycling habits. This data will be used to generate a more accurate company footprint this year. Additionally, staff have been asked to switch to green energy at home through switching schemes with a pledge by Coffee & TV to pay the difference if their bills went up.

Refrigerants

Coffee & TV’s next task is looking at refrigerants, which made up almost 30% of Coffee & TV’s total carbon emissions in 2020. Changing refrigerant use is said to be the number one way of solving global warming according to Project Drawdown so it has great potential. For context, the impact of a single kilogram of refrigerant gas is up to 35 times more damaging than beef production (it is a significant proportion of Coffee & TV’s emissions because they have done so much to reduce their emissions already in terms of switching energy supply). There are alternative, low emission gases being produced which will help reduce these emissions by a third!

Alongside Derek, Holly is currently working with the landlord of the building where Coffee & TV’s studio is based to implement the change throughout the whole building with a potential saving of 500 tonnes of carbon a year for their studio alone. The question then becomes, ‘Is it worth changing an air-con system that’s already fully functioning for a new system?’.

Staff engagement and encouragement has been an important factor. The welcoming attitude towards sustainability has trickled down from the founders of Coffee & TV, in particular their people and planet passionate CEO and board.

“I’m lucky that the company culture is so positive, this provided an atmosphere in which I felt like I could approach anyone in the company about our sustainability goals, and the reaction has been an eager and positive one.”

A lot of staff signed up to Do Nation, a platform where staff can make pledges to lower their environmental impact as individuals and within the company. There’s a company portal through which each staff member can complete pledges,which can involve anything from switching to green energy to green composting, and Holly herself offers additional support if needed. Even the company Slack is used to share information, such as asking people to use the WWF carbon footprint calculator and raising awareness of World Ocean Day. There’s a constant push to keep people engaged with new climate crisis news and resources so that staff’s individual actions aren’t just ‘one offs’.

Aware that reducing their impact alone is not enough, Coffee & TV are also on the Action 5 steering committee for Ad Net Zero where they work towards industry Net Zero 2030 goals and the run up to COP26.

Coffee & TV became carbon neutral in 2021 and is aiming for net zero by 2022. Most companies have set targets for 2025 and 2030. These are the ambitious goals which our industry needs to strive towards and we’re confident Derek, Holly and the folks at Coffee & TV will get there. Watch this space.

Find out more about Coffee & TV over at their website.

Coffee & TV are an albert approved supplier. Find out more about our suppliers here.