Sustainability

Drops in the Ocean supports initiatives protecting the planet by donating £2 million of Ocean’s reported revenue to environmental charities in the form of advertising value across our iconic, premium digital screen network.

In 2018 Ocean Outdoor created Oceans for Oceans; an initiative to act together to help end the use of single-use plastics within our business and stop plastic ending up in our seas and oceans. Partnering up with the Marine Conservation Society to work simultaneously on these issues, Ocean then supplied advertising space across the UK network to help amplify their messages, causes and fundraising appeals.

Following on from this partnership, in November 2021, Ocean advanced Oceans for Oceans to sit within their wider sustainability mission and created the Drops in the Ocean Fund. Under this initiative, Ocean Outdoor have donated £2 million of the Group’s reported revenue to organisations and causes associated with the preservation of land, nature, the oceans, global warming, pollution, and the climate emergency.

The chosen beneficiaries working to protect the planet are Pipal Tree, Justdiggit, Cool Earth, Our Only World, the Blue Marine Foundation and the Marine Conservation Society.

Drops in the Ocean gives charities and causes a change to appear at scale across some of Oceans Group’s 8,631 plus premium DOOH advertising locations in 834 cities.

Find out more about the fund here.

Source of Power - Electricity

Ocean is a business that consumes energy as part of our day to day operation in our offices and to obviously power our screens.

We are proud that since 2019 all electricity sourced and paid for by Ocean is 100% green from sustainable suppliers. As you can imagine, that’s a large amount of electricity.

Light Pollution

We limit hours of operation and voluntarily reduce brightness to below permitted levels and in more sensitive locations override our technology to deliver brightness levels lower than those dictated by our ambient light sensing equipment.

Ocean as a policy, do not operate our screens on a 24/7 basis, instead most of our large format screens are powered down between 23:00hrs and 06:00hrs, and Ocean’s small format networks between 03:00hrs and 06:00hrs. Ocean where possible places a self-imposed limit on brightness to override the integrated ambient lighting sensing systems.

This benefits our neighbours, the environment and our wildlife.

Sustainability Central to Ocean Procurement

Ocean’s procurement access’s our supplier’s environmental processes to ensure a multi-faceted approach to sustainability that strives to optimise our procured technology, educate our suppliers, reduce our corporate waste, and to stay actively involved to reduce our environmental footprint throughout all processes and in our eco-system.

Ocean continually review our environmental practices.

• Implementation of a general awareness program for suppliers. This general awareness is a component of being a new supplier to Ocean.
• Eliminating corporate waste through automation and LEAN manufacturing principles.
• Dedicating staff towards environmental stewardship and compliance.
• Recycling all eligible office and industrial materials.
• An ongoing commitment to procure energy-efficient, environmentally friendly products.

LED Supply

The move to LEDs is a huge shift in sustainability and the green credentials for Ocean and the wider DOOH market. Recognising the demand on energy sources, the typical LED burns about 10% of their energy as heat and the rest as light; as opposed to their predecessor, the incandescent light bulb, which burns about 98% of their energy as heat and 2% as light.

Ocean’s has chosen the world leader in LED technology as our preferred supplier. Part of this selection process was a firm commitment to exacting environmental and sustainable criteria, we have a partner who we are confident delivers the most efficient form of lighting commercially available today.

The technical commitment:

• Implementing Power Factor Correction (PFC) technology to maximise the efficiency of all display power connections.
• Creating RoHS-ready products completely devoid of mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium (Cr6+), polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) and other hazardous materials.

The sustainable commitment:

They also aggressively recycle all eligible office and industrial materials. Materials which are recycled as part of the manufacturing processes include;

• Aluminium , Steel, Cardboard, Plastic, Glass, Paint product cans, Wood, Paper, Printed Circuit Boards Industrial solvents, All outer packing materials used for shipping are free of PVC and are recyclable, No materials which have been bleached during the manufacturing and or shipping process.

Vinyl Banners

Polyvinyl Chloride Plastic, commonly known as PVC, is a highly environmentally, damaging plastic.

Approximately 340 million square meters of PVC banner was printed in Europe in 2018. Much of this ended up in landfill or was incinerated. Due to the ongoing concern with the material Ocean has sought alternative materials to replace the use of PVC on our banners. PVC is hard to recycle–– it’s a thin, flexible material that contains a number of chemical additives. Ultimately the only way to dispose of the vast majority of PVC banner material is either landfill, where it sits remaining whole for centuries, or incinerate it.

Kavalan is a PVC-free banner range that offers a viable replacement to traditional PVC banner material. PVC-free and phthalate–free, Kavalan looks like PVC, has the strength of PVC, performs like PVC, and welds like PVC. Kavalan offers all the benefits of PVC but none of the harmful environmental effects.

Ocean’s footprint across the key cities of the UK, allows us to create Wildlife Corridors across them.

Wildlife corridors are increasingly popular and important to the ecosystems and natural habitats of our cities. Creating individual safe havens for species but also creating stepping stones of nature across our cities for both flora and fauna.

Working with the UK Wildlife Trust’s to support our progress with this project, we have identified over 30 existing advertising locations across the UK that we are in the process of returning to nature. Creating habitats of native species to encourage the return of wildlife and act as educational focus points for schools in the area.

They will also assist with engaging community groups and schools, encouraging volunteering, connecting individuals and opportunities for young people.

Our Dutch colleagues are introducing Bee and Butterfly Hotels. These Hotels can be constructed around the superstructure of Ocean’s existing large format advertising displays that have the land capacity to support the planting of wild-flowers to feed and sustain the bees and butterflies.

Video of a Bee Hotel in the Dutch city of Utrecht

Working with the Wildlife Trusts to establish land management principles.

As part of our response to this crisis we are managing our sites land so that they positively contribute to biodiversity, particularly for pollinators

Such transformative action across the whole Ocean network is necessary to create ‘more, bigger, better and joined up’ habitats and ‘Making Space for Nature’.

Management Plan

From Autumn 2021

1. Early August cut/collect after which yellow rattle sown immediately across “meadows” areas on all plots.
2. Plots where we know no previous wildflower sowing some mix spread with the yellow rattle. Focus on perennials with small amount annual for immediate visual.
3. Shaded sessions – cut/collect in Autumn and sowing of woodland edge mix.

Regretfully there are businesses where employment laws are a million miles from best practice. Ocean will not do business with these organisations.

Ocean is committed to a work environment that is free from human trafficking, forced labour and unlawful child labour, we will not accept products and/or services from suppliers that employ or utilise child labour or forced labour.

We have responsibility under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to ensure transparency in the provision of all our goods and services and we take it seriously.

As part of the company’s due diligence processes into slavery and human trafficking we conduct a supplier approval process which incorporates a review of the controls undertaken by the supplier, and Account Manager and Contracts Managers will continually monitor the level of management control required.

It is mandatory that suppliers meet the following requirements, which are investigated as part of our Supplier onboarding process and Supplier Health, Safety and Environmental Assessment. Suppliers:

• Will not use forced or compulsory labour, i.e., any work or service that a worker performs involuntarily, under threat of penalty
• Will ensure that the overall terms of employment are voluntary
• Will comply with the minimum age requirements prescribed by applicable laws
• Will compensate its workers with wages and benefits that meet or exceed the legally required minimum and will comply with overtime pay requirements
• Will abide by applicable law concerning the maximum hours of daily labour
• Will not engage in any practice of slavery, servitude, forced labour, compulsory labour and/or human trafficking outside the UK which would constitute an offence if that conduct took place within the UK; and
• Will ensure that any sub-contractors or suppliers from whom they source goods and/or services for incorporation in those supplied to Ocean, also adhere to these requirements.

Suppliers will confirm their compliance and their adherence to relevant human trafficking and slavery laws in each of the relevant countries in which they operate and be able to demonstrate their compliance upon request.

We conduct audits to ensure 100% compliance.

Registered Suppliers

It’s not only about how we conduct ourselves, but also about how the people we do business with conduct themselves.

At Ocean Outdoor, contractors are vetted before they can join our suppliers list. To meet our requirements, suppliers are required to complete our Supplier Health, Safety and Environmental Assessment and provide relevant documentation to support the answers given.

Where relevant, contractors need to recognise, or be compliant with a standard equivalent to ISO14001 (Environmental Management) and/or have in place an environmental policy that is communicated to all employees, together with clear arrangements and a champion responsible within the business.

Each contractor on our list of registered suppliers needs to have processes in place that match with our own environmental goals, and we continue to monitor and review the information provided within Supplier Assessments, conducting annual reviews to ensure ongoing compliance. Where relevant, we are encouraging all of our suppliers to be ISO14001 compliant (or equivalent) by 2025.

This applies wherever in the world Ocean is doing business.

We believe in actions and the Ocean team are fully behind doing our little bit to make the world a better place for future generations.

Team engagement is key – here are some of the things we have been up to:

• Companywide clean of Brighton Beach under the stewardship of the MCS.
• Single use plastics litter picking in Soho, London.
• ‘Donate your Guilt’ campaign for the MCS which was designed to encourage people to remember to leave home with their reusable bags, mugs and water bottles rather than buying single use plastics which often end up in the waterways or seas, the ads urged those that had forgotten to do so, to make a £3 donation to the charity to encourage societal and behavioural change.
• The introduction of an Ocean for Oceans category in our annual Digital Creative Competition to encourage ideas from ad agency to help public awareness of single use plastic and the impact on the world’s oceans in order to win £100,000 of media space and technical and creative assistance to develop and run the campaign. First winner was the Sky Ocean Rescue campaign which on World Oceans Day turned Ocean Screens into underwater worlds and used a smartphone app to reveal the invasion of single use plastic.
• 'Ocean Plastic Pollution’ competition: Year 6 pupils from 25 schools across London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh were invited to illustrate how single use plastics are polluting our Oceans, they were given a template to work with and a selection of the best posters were showcased on Ocean screens nationwide.

The advertising industry is mobilising in response to the climate emergency. The Ad Net Zero initiative represents an industry-wide collaboration to curb emissions from advertising industry’s operations: including the ad production process, media planning and buying. This is delivered as part of a partnership between the Advertising Association, IBSA and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

Their ‘Ad Net Zero’ report launched November 2020 calculated the operational emissions of the advertising industry to be 84,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and outlined a 5-step plan for organisations to reduce emissions.

Over 80 companies spanning brands, agencies, media owners, tech platforms and trade bodies have signed up to the Ad Net Zero initiative. As of December 2021, Ocean Outdoor are proud supporters of the Ad Net Zero group in order to help combat climate change within the industry and create a more sustainable future.

Visit adassoc.org.uk for more information.

Ad net Zero purposes action on five fronts:

• Advertising businesses’ own operations
• Advertising production
• Media buying and planning
• Awards and events
• Using advertising’s positive influence to promote more sustainable behaviour