Hi friend,

It’s finally that halfway point of the year, with arguably the best month for picnics and BBQs on the horizon.

Did you enjoy our jam-packed impact reporting special? If you missed it the first time, you can find it via the button at the bottom of this newsletter.

Let’s get into another cracking issue of nineteen eighty four, delivered straight to your inbox from your friends at Avery & Brown.

Mastering the shock-factor of a campaign

Looking at a seal getting its neck wringed out is pretty grim, and that’s exactly why it’s genius marketing. The shock-factor campaign created by the Times Group for its new Unplastic India movement takes aim at bringing more attention to the 30 million tons of plastic plaguing our oceans and what must be done to end single-use plastics.

If you’re a freelancer or small business with your own website, optimising your site is super important to give visitors a smooth experience. If you want to see where you’re at, you can use this free resource to analyse any performance issues your website could have and how to iron them out.

The Kiwi apparel brand Allbirds just unveiled the world’s first shoe with a 0.0 kg CO2e carbon footprint during the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen. How you can create the shoe is no secret, as a special toolkit has been made publicly available, so any brand can follow the recipe.

Have you seen the absolutely insane smart city being built in Saudi Arabia? ‘The Line’ will reportedly be capable of housing 9 million people while stretching 170km long. The problem with its design is, it’d be much better off if it was a circle instead.

Saving the world with positive tipping points

Sometimes we cross thresholds within our climate where we can’t go back, and we’re currently teetering on the edge of some very large sheer drops like the acidification of oceans, melting of icecaps, and dieback of forests.

So, what can we do? In this new writeup, Professor Tim Lenton lets us know the importance of positive tipping points that can help fight back with small social or economic changes; adding up to create permanent positive consequences on the planet.

For a good in-depth read on navigating the polycrisis (the Earth nearing FUBAR status), you might enjoy this new report by the Post Carbon Institute; Welcome to the Great Unraveling. The report covers the polycrisis origins, the signs of its arrival and evolution, and why we should all be thinking differently about the future.

In a spot of good news, the UN’s member states have adopted a new legally binding marine biodiversity agreement after 20 years of turbulent negotiations. The treaty aims to protect and care for marine environments while also ensuring their responsible use, on top of maintaining ocean ecosystems and conserving marine biological diversity.

Icebergs certainly get around. Apart from sending the Titanic to the bottom of the Atlantic, they also contain 70% of the Earth’s freshwater, fertilise the ocean with nutrients, and create ‘iceberg killing fields’ from scouring seabeds. Here are some big reasons why you should care about icebergs.

Looking to level up your environmental knowledge? This mega thread of 10 free online courses on sustainability and climate change might be one for you.

Who’s been getting the most out of AI tools?

You might have used AI tools here and there for a few tasks or even have it on hand as a personal assistant on the daily, but have you ever wondered how everyone else is using them? The Verge recently polled 2,000 adults on how they’re using AI, what they want it to do, and what about it scares them the most.

For any companies out there on the journey to net zero, reducing emissions can end up being a mammoth task once you’ve already tackled the low hanging fruit. So, where do you go once you’ve run out of quick wins? Here’s how you can rethink the rules and get more inventive when removing emissions in your business.

The ASA have announced a big crackdown on greenwashing after the growing trend of misleading claims in advertisements from the likes of HSBC, Shell, and Deutsche Lufthansa. With the ASA’s motivation being ‘because the stakes are high’, the tightening standards will aim to improve the transparency and accuracy of future ads.

We had a feature in Business Leader

We made it into the news this month after being featured in a piece by Business Leader on the sustainable travel of businesses, picking up on our sustainable travel policy and return train journey from London to Berlin last year!

Back in April, Russ & Tim headed out to Barcelona with our client EnviroSustain to attend GBCI Europe Circle 2023. We did a bit of filming while we were there, and you can now watch the highlight reel we produced over on EnviroSustain’s YouTube channel.

Did you catch us at Reset Connect this week? Russ & Tim were there on Day 2, wandering around and chatting to exhibitors and fellow attendees about their sustainable marketing (or lack thereof) efforts. If you want to know what events we’re going to be at each month, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn.

Each issue of nineteen eighty four, we feature a different Certified B Corporation, to celebrate the brands which are working hard to create a better business world. To learn more about B Corps, click here.

Our featured B Corp this week is…

Huel

One of the newest B corps to receive certification this month is none other than popular food brand Huel.

After launching in 2015 with the mission to ‘make nutritionally complete, convenient, affordable food, with minimal impact on animals and the environment.’, the brand are ensuring that all produced meals are low carbon with low impact ingredients, while also striving to be a better business.