One of the core values here at Splitpixel is sustainability – we always make a conscious effort to keep this at the forefront of everything we create and each decision we make as a company.
Sustainability is a process. We can’t just sit back and assume we’re doing fine – we need to keep improving the way we do things with the wellbeing of the climate and the environment in mind.
One of the biggest impacts we can have as a sustainable digital agency is to use sustainable hosting providers that run on renewable energy to host all of our websites, and to build in efficient ways that reduce carbon usage on each page load.
But it’s not just about the things we produce – everything underpinning our work is just as important. This drive to do better in every aspect of Splitpixel has seen the team working with local organisations and companies to find out more about how we can be more sustainable as a business, and how we as individuals can do our bit for the planet.
Becoming a Carbon Literate Organisation
Throughout the last year, our management team have been attending seminars and training sessions to become Carbon Literate, and at the start of March, they shared their experience with the wider team. We put our keyboards to one side, and co-founder Charlie, Creative Director Rob and Development Manager Ash delivered an impressive training session with the help of The Carbon Literacy Project.
The team spent the day finding out which industries have the biggest carbon footprint, and how we as individuals, and together as a company, can reduce carbon emissions and minimise our carbon footprint.
To end the day and get our certificates, we all committed to completing Action Pledges, listing ways we would reduce our personal carbon footprints and encourage others in the office to do the same. Suggestions included meat-free office days, where we’d all commit to going veggie for the day, car sharing on the commute to work, and data purge days, where we delete all of the unnecessary files and emails from our laptops.
We’re pleased to say that the entire team passed their Carbon Literacy training with flying colours and we are now a Carbon Literate Organisation!
Team Conservation Day
For the first time in a long while, the whole team ventured out of the office together for a Team Conservation Day. We carpooled to Bank Woods in Harrogate, where we met with the Make It Wild team of conservationists on their 110-acre site, which is designated a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation.
The conservation day began with a talk from Helen Neave, the Co-founder and Director of Make It Wild. Helen used her medical knowledge and lived experiences to explain the benefits of spending time in nature and how important carbon offsetting and creating biodiverse spaces are for the planet.
After a hearty homemade vegan lunch, the team walked up through the Bank Wood site. On the walk, we got to see the rewilding areas where there are semi-improved pastures, gorse, waterlogged grassland, several small streams, ponds, areas of ancient woodland and some gorgeous, belted Galloway cows.
We spent the afternoon up in the hills cutting down gorse, a spikey plant that threatens native habitats, which reduces biodiversity in the area. With the help of Co-founder Christopher Neave, we put our allotment gardening tools to good use and removed a large chunk of gorse from the area. The team worked brilliantly together, with small groups forming to chop, rake and bag up the gorse and move it to an area where small animals and insects can create habitats from it.
Splitpixel’s Company Allotment
For the third year running, our team are springing into action with all green thumbs on deck to get our allotment growing. We’re taking over the windowsills in our homes to sow seeds and putting on our wellies and getting our hands dirty in the planters. The team have all chipped in to help, and our allotment will be blooming lovely in no time.
We wanted to cover all bases at the allotment, so not only are we growing vegetables to sustain ourselves, but we’ve planted a wildflower area alongside our pond, to help keep the area as biodiverse as possible. Our pond has also been a welcome addition to the area, providing a home for local wildlife, including a few families of frogs.
Our approach to AI
The digital space has been awash with AI advancements over the last few years. Almost everyone has hopped onto the trend; you can’t scroll LinkedIn without seeing cheesy cartoon caricatures or copy-and-paste content that somehow sounds both prophetic and pathetic at the same time. And while some technological advancements are welcomed, the AI boom has been divisive in the digital media and creative sectors.
Splitpixel want to create meaningful change in the digital landscape. We put our core values of accessibility, inclusivity and sustainability into the heart of everything we do, and with the harm AI is doing to our planet, it’s not something we can get behind without doing our research and taking precautions. It has been claimed that the AI boom caused the same volume of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as the whole of New York City. The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading tech has also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand.
To reflect our views on accessibility and sustainability, we’ve formulated an AI policy that we encourage all of our staff to follow. We believe that our clients and people coming to our agency are seeking the expertise and lived experience of our staff and colleagues, which isn’t something AI can generate for them – our clients see the value in the skills and creativity our agency can bring to the table.
With this in mind, and in the interest of being cautious and responsible with all uses of AI as it integrates further into our industry and the applications we use, we’ve created an AI policy that helps you make a conscious decision before jumping into using AI software.
Our AI policy has five key principles that we feel help us navigate the use of AI models in the creative and digital industries.
- Impact on People and the Planet
- Fact Checking and Bias
- Security and Legal Issues
- Fragility of Infrastructure and Ethical Concerns on Leadership
- Quality of Output and Performance
First and foremost is the environmental impact, and it’s the element we’re keeping the keenest eye on in the news.
Future sustainability efforts in 2026
We’ve already done a lot of work in the first half of the year. Can you imagine what else we’re going to do in the rest of 2026? You can keep up to date with our sustainability efforts and our ongoing projects by signing up for our newsletter. If you want to work with a sustainable, creative digital agency that cares about the planet and the people we work with, get in touch today!
