Supercool's Sustainability Action Plan 2025
6 March 2025
We’re not experts – and we’re certainly not perfect – but we are big advocates for environmental sustainability.
Through our ongoing initiative of sustainability-related actions we're learning a lot, and doing what we can to make a positive difference. And by sharing what we're doing, we hope to also help others to help the planet.
We published our first Sustainability Pledge in December 2020 – setting out our plan of action to try and become a more sustainable company. Since then we’ve shared regular updates about our plans, what we’ve managed to get done, what we haven't – and why.
Our last update covered how we’re getting on with our most recent pledges.
Here’s where we're directing our focus over the next 12 months …
✅ Work out our approach to AI
A wide-ranging subject that includes sustainability – so it’s an important part of our considerations. We’re already doing well with this – having formulated a Supercool AI Policy.
And Kate shared these helpful tips about balancing the benefits of AI with the not-so-so-great aspects of the technology. As with any fast-moving and changing thing, I suspect we’ll need to review our approach to AI again in the not-too-distant future.
🤓 Move from Mailchimp to Ecosend
We need to be mindful of the suppliers and tools we work with – and whether or not they align well with our own company values. As part of this, we decided to move from Mailchimp to Ecosend. Because Ecosend reduce and offset the emissions generated from every email marketing campaign sent through them, provide smaller message formats, easier audience segmentation, lighter signup forms, and more efficient infrastructure. This will help us craft the best emails – with the least emissions.
We’re already pretty far along getting set-up on the platform, so will start sending our monthly newsletter, Supercool Sessions invites, and Client Quarterly newsletters via Ecosend later this year.
🤓 Carbon Literacy Training for new Supercoolers
Most of us at Supercool are certified Carbon Literate – but since that certification in 2023 we’ve grown the team. So, we have another Carbon Literacy training programme in the calendar for August.
Read about what our first cohort of Supercoolers learnt from the Carbon Literacy training.
🤓 Improve the work we create with – and for – clients in terms of sustainability
An ongoing and long term pledge; but over the next year we’re focusing on these 3 areas:
- Measure the environmental impact of the websites we build – Part of this is linked with our first-of-its-kind sector benchmarking study, and soon-to-be-released report – see next action point!
- Review W3C’s Sustainability Guidelines – We’ll be looking out for the biggest wins, and working out how to weave these into our development work day-to-day
- Add sustainability ’check-ins’ throughout projects – We need to keep ourselves alert and accountable, to make sure we’re doing all the stuff mentioned above. A good way to do this is to have pre-set check-ins at several points throughout projects. Not only will this help us make sure we’re doing everything we’ve planned to do, it should also make us stop and think – and potentially spot other opportunities for sustainability improvements/suggestions.
🚀 Compile and launch the Cultural Website Sustainability Benchmarking Report – 2025
Our flagship sustainability project aims to help cultural organisations understand what “good” looks like in terms of an environmentally sustainable website.
Between February and April 2025, in collaboration with our friends Digital Carbon Online, we tracked the most popular pages of 68 cultural organisations’ websites. Since then, we’ve been analysing the data, and are now at the stage of pulling-together our findings. (Alongside helpful, practical tips for making your website ‘greener’.)
We're launching the Cultural Website Sustainability Benchmarking Report 2025 at the AMA Conference in July.
After that, the full report will be freely available to anyone in the sector – so that everyone can benefit from the findings, and everyone can better understand how to reduce the impact of their own websites.
More about this project so far:
We’ll also continue to:
🧐 Check the environmental sustainability credentials of new suppliers
It’s important to us to work with other businesses that share our values, and understand the importance of considering sustainability in their day-to-day work.
🙌 Plant / conserve trees for every new website we launch
Recent launches include: British Library Events, Paraorchestra, and Watermill Theatre.
🌳 Fund trees and support verified carbon avoidance projects
We do this every month, and for each and every member of the Supercool team, as part of being a Climate Action Workforce through Ecologi.
🫶 Have regular Sustainability Working Group meetings
To check-in on our Action Plan progress, and suggest new ideas.
🧡 Freely share what we're doing – and what we're learning along the way
Talking openly about this stuff helps to keep us accountable, spreads the knowledge, and encourages others – the team, our clients, sector organisations, sector suppliers, and our peers – to tread more lightly on the planet.
Keen to learn more about digital sustainability?
Head to our Sustainability resource hub >