New Scientist and i launch £100K sustainability impact fund
Mail Metro Media news brands i and New Scientist have jointly launched a £100,000 fund to support and amplify advertising aimed at driving more sustainable behaviours.
The Impact Fund wants to provide additional investment for active advertisers that champion “positive environmental messaging”.
Businesses can now pitch to access the Impact Fund. If granted, they will be given up to £10,000 of additional investment to support a match-funded campaign with the news brands.
New Scientist and i are seeking application from brands across different categories, including energy, finance, retail, travel and fashion. Applicants need to demonstrate they are actively looking to build more explicit or implicit sustainable messaging into their advertising.
For example, brands will be asked to supply information on the types of sustainable behaviours they are looking to promote through their ad campaigns, creative assets and information, and links to publicly available documentation on their approach to sustainability.
The funding round is open for a year and Mail Metro Media will consider running it again depending on applicant interest.
‘Green champions’
According to Jacqui Merrington, deputy commercial editorial director and sustainability lead at Mail Metro Media, the idea for the Impact Fund came through its “green champions” working team, a group of sustainability-focused members of the wider commercial team who have been tasked with developing ideas for improving sustainability practices at the publisher.
While the Impact Fund is not the first sustainable initiative launched by Mail Metro Media, The Media Leader understands that it is the first external initiative to have been launched by the “green champions” team.
Other sustainability efforts at Mail Metro Media in recent years include cutting down on its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions and working to make its buildings become more energy efficient.
Oliver Duff, editor-in-chief of i, said the fund is “a commitment to working with our commercial partners to make the world a better place”.
“Beyond news and politics, environmental stories are among our most read on theipaper.com,” Duff added. “Our audience believes it can have a positive impact on the natural world. Harnessing the power of advertising is an obvious next step.”
This summer, i launched a manifesto challenging all UK political parties to “save Britain’s rivers” from pollution and neglect.
New Scientist editor Catherine de Lange added that its readers also share values relating to the need to mitigate global warming and find more sustainable ways of living, with climate stories also popular among its audience.
“The new Impact Fund is an opportunity to drive genuine changes in behaviour, which will only add to the positive impact we can have with our journalism,” she said.
New Scientist was acquired by DMGT for £70m in 2021. i was purchased by DMGT in 2019 for £49.6m.
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Cop29 backdrop
The announcement comes as this year’s Cop29 climate change conference has kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The conference has been criticised for being hosted in Azerbaijan, a leading exporter of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency has estimated that oil and gas make up more than 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports.
Writing in The Guardian on Monday, climate activist Greta Thunberg announced that she would not be attending Cop29 given it is being hosted by “another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights” and that “Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a liveable world and future”.
Just days ahead of the meeting, a senior Cop29 official was filmed discussing “investment opportunities” with a man posing as a potential investor in Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company.
At the conference, the United Nations has said 2024 will become the warmest year ever recorded. Last week, researchers from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service estimated that 2024 would be the first year in which global temperatures consistently rose 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Merrington added that while Mail Metro Media is aware of the timeliness of the Impact Fund launch around Cop29, “we don’t just want to be talking about the environment when it’s Cop”.
She continued: “Everyone can do more. But it’s about progress rather than perfection.
“It’s important that all these issues remain front and centre of people’s minds.”