Guardian Advertising has become the first media company in the world to train its entire sales team to be certified Carbon Literate.

The news was announced today (22 April), which is World Earth Day.

Being Carbon Literate means that all staff in the advertising team understand the carbon costs and impact of everyday activities and the ability to help reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis.

The decision to train the team was driven by industry research highlighting a knowledge gap in climate change within advertising. For example, a recent study by the WFA and Kantar revealed that 35% of marketers reported a lack of knowledge and skills in sustainability, an increase from 20% in 2021.

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Guardian Advertising took the view that its staff, who are all in customer-facing roles, should be equipped with the skills to talk confidently about the issue and help find practical ways to address it.

The Guardian sustainability team created a bespoke course based on the publication’s award-winning climate journalism. The course is accredited by the Carbon Literacy Project, a UK charity helping inform and empower people globally to take action on the climate emergency.

At the end of the programme, staff committed to a series of individual and team actions, which it is estimated will prevent up to 20,000kgs of CO2e emissions.

Julie Richards, director of sustainability and operational transformation at Guardian Media Group, said: “At the Guardian we made great progress over the last five years to cut our own company emissions by over 40%.”

“As a global media organisation we also have the ability to make a much wider positive impact with readers and with the agencies and brands that we work with. Sustainability is part of everyone’s job and it has been fantastic to partner with our advertising team on this Carbon Literacy workshop,” she added.

Following the training, Guardian Advertising has made three commitments:

• Taking the Guardian’s Carbon Literacy workshop to the industry via its quarterly Agency Council update and regular meetings with key clients and agency partners.
• Implementing a new tool to measure campaign carbon emissions. This will help clients make informed choices about their media spend.
• Implementing AdGreen, an Ad Net Zero initiative to reduce emissions from advertising production – to strengthen the Guardian’s commitment to sustainable production practices in content partnerships.

As a result of the training, 97% of participants said they felt more knowledgeable about climate change and confident about identifying actions that will reduce their team’s carbon impact. While 84% of participants now feel confident talking to clients and colleagues about the climate crisis, up from 28% before the workshop.

Phil Korbel, co-founder and director for external relations at Carbon Literacy, said it is “brilliant to have the Guardian join the community of Carbon Literate employers”.

“Their baseline of climate commitment was already high, but this demonstrates how a specialised course can build targeted capacity such as that of a sales team being better able to pitch their low carbon offer,” he said.

“The pledge to spread the training into their sector is just the sort of thing we love to see as Carbon Literacy becomes a norm in professional development.”