Have you watched an episode of EastEnders just lately? You might have spied an electrical car (EV) whizzing by Albert Square, or a subtly positioned recycling bin close to The Queen Vic. Sustainability is a key a part of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s output, whether or not it’s in woven into its programming, or factored into behind the scenes manufacturing.
It’s all below the directive of Danielle Mulder, the BBC’s Group Director of Sustainability. She was appointed to the position in 2021 with a remit to attain web zero by 2030 throughout the worldwide BBC organisation.
It’s no small job. Since its first broadcast simply over 100 years in the past, the BBC now reaches a world viewers of 492 million individuals. There’s a good likelihood you’ll have watched a programme, caught up on the information, learn an article, or listened to a radio present produced by its 22,000 workers. In 2022, individuals spent 53 billion hours consuming BBC content material within the UK alone.
But broadcasting and manufacturing at this scale comes with a sizeable carbon footprint. The BBC calculated that their greenhouse gasoline emissions in 2019/20 got here to 1.3 million tonnes CO2e globally. That’s the emission equal of roughly 283,000 round-trip flights between London and New York.
We spoke with Danielle Mulder to seek out out extra about her technique and to know how know-how is taking part in a pivotal position in serving to the BBC Group obtain its objectives.
The science-based targets to attain web zero
With a world accountability for sustainability initiatives throughout the BBC’s public service, worldwide bureaus, and industrial operations, Mulder is happy for the problem her web zero programme poses. “It’s a large remit for a reason,” she displays. “It means there’s a consistent strategy across the whole organisation, regardless of where you sit.”
Mulder’s sustainability technique has three pillars. “The core pillar homes in on net zero,” she explains. “We also have a pillar on nature – we call it nature positive – where we take responsibility for our impact on biodiversity and nature itself. And our third pillar is people positive, which is about the impact of our programming on people, as well as our staff.”
The web zero targets are cut up into three classes: scope one, which incorporates direct fossil fuels, scope two, which incorporates electrical energy, and scope three, which incorporates oblique emissions similar to these from the provision chain.
To obtain the scope one and two targets, Mulder is concentrated on lowering using fossil fuels in buildings, operations, and firm autos, in addition to guaranteeing that the electrical energy used is licensed to a renewable vitality commonplace. For scope three, the most important contributor is the provision chain emissions, so engagement with suppliers is essential. The BBC can be collaborating with friends similar to Sky and ITV to decarbonise collectively by way of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).
Moving from a cottage trade of spreadsheets to 1 supply of knowledge
With such a big scope, Mulder’s staff just lately applied Microsoft’s Sustainability Manager to assist them handle carbon emissions and general sustainability efficiency. The Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability answer brings knowledge collectively to assist firms monitor and handle their environmental affect.
Mulder says it doesn’t matter what sort of firm you might be, you want knowledge to behave with affect. “If you have signed up for science-based targets and a net-zero goal, you need a tool like Microsoft’s Sustainability Manager to gather and consolidate data into one reliable source. It gives you one version of the truth, and you can make informed decisions based on accurate information.”
The Sustainability Manager is getting used to watch the BBC’s vitality consumption, journey, and waste technology. By monitoring these elements, the BBC can determine areas the place they’re utilizing assets inefficiently and develop methods to scale back their affect on the surroundings. The device additionally permits the BBC to report its sustainability efficiency, enhancing transparency and accountability.
“The platform itself is to help us avoid a cottage industry of spreadsheets,” Mulder says. “It creates efficiencies – we can save a lot of time, and potentially money as well.”
The position of know-how in attaining web zero
“Our implementation of Microsoft Sustainability Manager goes all the way down from division level to cost centre level, so we have a holistic overview,” she says. “It enables us to capture the carbon emissions related to each cost centre and that’s powerful.”
The Carbon Trust performed a evaluate of Mulder and her staff confirm their knowledge. The BBC has already achieved a 15% discount of their emissions. Sustainability Manager permits them to confirm knowledge, monitor progress, and see particulars of how they achieved their targets, similar to lowering gasoline, diesel, and oil use and enhancing constructing effectivity.
“From the production through to the end user, technology is the red thread through it all,” Mulder says. “It underpins a lot of what the media system does, from production technology to how we transmit and distribute data. Cloud services also play a role – we need to know how efficient that technology is in terms of energy consumption.”
But know-how isn’t all the pieces. “Some of this change depends on people. We need engagement and behavioural change too, where consumers make different choices but also employees.””
Informing, educating, entertaining on the journey to web zero
One of the BBC’s founding ideas is to tell, educate, and entertain. Mulder is constructing on this basis together with her technique, utilizing the BBC’s programming and platforms to consolidate the sustainability message.
“More than 6,000 hours of TV content is commissioned, nearly 3000 hours of content is produced by BBC Studios, and there is more than 70,000 hours of radio output. When it came to news output, our analysts couldn’t give me a number because it is produced and distributed across so many different platforms,” says Mulder. “The challenge for me is how to make that sustainable; from commissioning, to producing, to how we get it on air. Then there’s the messaging in that content.”
The milestone second for Mulder was at COP26 when the BBC’s Director General, Tim Davie, together with 11 different UK broadcasters (together with ITV, Channel 4, and Sky) signed a pledge to enhance the standard of their local weather change storytelling. It dedicated all broadcasters to combine the newest local weather science throughout all their content material, and throughout all genres.
“It was a significant turning point,” displays Mulder. “A lot of other sectors could see how we were collaborating, and it was a ‘wow’ moment. From there it really came together.”
Taking benefit of this momentum was the subsequent problem. News was excluded from the pledge due to the coverage of impartiality, so Mulder regarded to programmes and began with the commissioners. “The ideal opportunity to integrate climate science is at the commissioning level, when a programme is green lit,” says Mulder. Informing commissioners on the subject and serving to them perceive the concepts behind sustainability is essential, she says. And though Mulder mentions a number of the BBC Natural History Unit’s current hits – David Attenborough’s Green Planet, which focuses on vegetation, or Wild Isles which celebrates British wildlife – she is fast to recognise that the message ought to transcend the Science & Nature class.
She cites the primetime journal programme The One Show, which usually has sustainability-themed options. The Great British Sewing Bee harks again to the ‘make, do, and mend’ method of years passed by. And even the cleaning soap opera EastEnders is instrumental in speaking the sustainability message.
“There’s a big role to be played in having climate science implicitly weaved into our content. It’s all about the normalisation of sustainability. In EastEnders you’ll see an electric vehicle (EV) charging point on the programme, or an EV whizzing around Albert Square. We also build it into storylines – characters talk about recycling and reuse, and food banks. We’ve even had special edition end credits highlighting how climate change will impact London and the River Thames. It’s subtle but it normalises important topics.”
How to get began in your sustainability journey
Mulder is conscious of the accountability that comes with the formidable web zero goal, however she embraces the problem and encourages different firms to do the identical.
“We all have a role to play in this,” she displays. “If you look at the BBC’s emissions, they’re not as big as some other organisations in terms of our direct operational emissions. But we recognise that, as a responsible business, we should address them.”
“We need to play our part in halving them by 2030, which is what we’re committed to doing.”
For firms who’re simply beginning their sustainability journey, Mulder has some core ideas: “Don’t delay, just get started and you will figure things out as you go. Get help where you need it. And make sure you get buy in from the top, as it makes the whole transition a lot easier – and that’s essential for success.”