The Screen Forum, an independent working group focused on sharing best practices in the digital signage industry, has released a list of one dozen steps aimed at ensuring digital signage networks deliver the maximum impact with the minimum affect on the environment.
The steps, available on a popular news portal (http://www. prweb.com/releases/2010/05/prweb3948684.htm), are a well-reasoned list of prescriptions for minimizing the impact of digital signage networks on the environment. While the list is publicly available on the Web and self-explanatory, one aspect of the Screen Forum’s 12 steps is particularly fascinating and worthy of consideration.
Achieving balance underpins much of the list —the balance between environmental impact and performance; the balance between achieving communications goals and doing so in a way that does not diminish, or is sympathetic to, nearby landmarks; and the balance between fulfilling its main purpose as digital signage and giving back to the community by promoting environmental awareness.
Balancing performance and environmental impact touches many phases of digital signage network rollout and operations. The concept laid out in the steps seems to focus on drawing a distinction between saturation and sufficiency. Many of the steps advocate doing no more than is necessary to accomplish the desired mission of communications. Limiting the number of computer components, the size of the network and number of displays therein as well as the power requirements of the network seeks to balance the task at hand with the environmental cost of accomplishing it.
Achieving equilibrium in terms of digital signage performance and placement vis-a-vis nearby landmarks gets at the most basic of environmental concerns, namely impacting the locale in which the sign hangs. The concept is akin to the stark contrast between states that have outlawed or restricted placement of billboards along highways and driving down the Las Vegas Strip. The Screen Forum’s admonition balances the legitimate desire to communicate important messages via digital signs with the need to appreciate the surroundings of the signs and minimise whenever and however possible the likelihood of the sign’s detracting from their local environment.
Acknowledging the opportunity to use the network —if even only on a periodic basis— to raise the awareness of the public about environmental concerns is particularly fascinating because it recognises there’s far more to a digital signage network than hardware and software. In fact, the reason for being of any digital signage network is to communicate messages —often finely defined, narrowcast communications. Balancing that mission with the unrelated goal of communicating to the public about environmental concerns recognises that there’s more to communicating successfully than a well-defined message. It’s almost as if the Screen Forum transplanted the concept of public service announcements from the television medium to the arena of digital signage, except digital signage networks have no government mandated public service obligation to fulfill.
Without question, few people would commit to digital signage as a communications medium solely on the basis of its environmental impact. Digital signs must fulfil their primary function, namely effective communications, or they are of little use to marketers, advertisers and other professional communicators. That being said, there is no reason why their environmental friendly status shouldn’t be considered as another strong reason to consider replacing traditional printed signs where appropriate.
The green nature of digital signs offer communicators an opportunity to shrink the amount of plastic, ink and chemical coatings introduced into the environment, a way to reduce the number of trees cut for paper products, and eliminate the transportation emissions associated with the entire workflow chain from producing to displaying and ultimately replacing printed signs.
Beyond these benefits to the environment, going green via digital signage also positions communicators to realise cost savings, enhance productivity, improve responsiveness to changing communications requirements and make more efficient use of display space. This synergy between the environmental and business benefits of digital signs contributes to a healthier world and a more profitable bottom line.
However, simply replacing printed signs with their digital equivalents isn’t enough to reap these benefits. Digital signs have their own set of environmental concerns, such as power consumption and the use of certain toxic or greenhouse gas producing chemicals in the production of displays and electronic components. However, with proper planning electrical consumption can be diminished, and industry efforts to remove elements like arsenic and cadmium from computer components are reducing the release of these chemicals in landfills.
Often businesses and their employees seek ways to be greener as they pursue their objectives but find it difficult to identify concrete steps they can take. For professional communicators, however, there is a greener way to disseminate vital information. That means is digital signage —a powerful medium that’s also environmentally friendly.
The following is reprinted with permission from the Digital Screenmedia Association (DSA). For more information, go to http://www.digitalscreenmedia.org.
This white paper was reprinted with permission from the Digital Screenmedia Association . For more information go to www.digitalscreenmedia.org
