Following SBS’ 2026 Upfronts, the national broadcaster has unveiled a sweeping sustainability framework that aims to help advertisers decarbonise media campaigns, empower audiences to make informed choices and hold itself publicly accountable to its own Net Zero roadmap.
At the centre of this effort is SBS Brief Green, a new sustainability toolkit designed to give brands the tools to reduce their advertising emissions without disrupting media outcomes.
“SBS Brief Green is a response to brands who have come to us looking for the chance to align their media strategy with their wider business climate commitments in a cost-effective way,” said SBS acting director of media sales Lee Fifoot. “It is an opportunity to achieve premium exposure and at the same time, lead the industry toward a more sustainable future.”
Speaking to B&T, SBS’s head of sustainability, Abigail Thomas, said the new offering reflects a years-long journey to embed environmental action across every part of the broadcaster’s operations.
“We first started measuring our carbon footprint back in 2021… You need to actually measure first so that you understand the picture,” she explained. “The very first thing we did was measure our footprint, just to understand where we stood, what the size of our operational imprint was, and then how to tackle it.”
That data-driven approach led SBS to switch to 100 per cent renewable energy in 2023, sign a 10-year renewable energy deal, and become the first Australian broadcaster to have its near- and long-term carbon reduction targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.
“Now that we have been measuring our footprint for the last five years, we can actually see that it is coming down, and it’s heading towards our near-term target of 2030,” Thomas said. “Each step may appear quite small, but it’s consistently moving in the right direction”.
From Emissions To Education
For SBS, sustainability is as much about mindset as measurement.
“Advertising can be a lever to shaping mindset, norms, and behaviour,” SBS Cultural Connect’s National Manager Kate Young told B&T. “Ultimately, advertising has a direct impact on consumer behaviour and we want to encourage consumers and brands to promote practices which are sustainable and which drive a better long-term outcome”.
That philosophy underpins initiatives like the Sustainability Stories hub on SBS On Demand, a curated collection of environmental documentaries, climate solutions, and First Nations perspectives, and the SBS Media Sustainability Challenge, which aims to normalise sustainable behaviour in advertising.
“Sustainability will look slightly different for every brand; however, we need to ensure it looks like a lived habit rather than a staged moment, ie, ads showing people making everyday sustainable decisions like choosing public transport, waste separation bins in the kitchen, or using refill products rather than buying new packaging,” Young said.
Building A Blueprint For The Industry
Thomas described SBS’s progress as “almost like a blueprint for others to follow.” As a founding member of Sustainable Screens Australia, Green Ears and Ad Net Zero, SBS has worked with industry counterparts to align standards and share best practices.
“Every part of our operations, we looked at who else was out there in the industry and how we could team up and support each other, share lessons and so on,” she said. “We wanted to have credibility, to get our own house in order first”.
That credibility, Thomas said, is what transforms sustainability from a departmental initiative into a strategic advantage. “Embedding it across the organisation does give us that strategic advantage… You can attract and retain staff who care about these issues, attract suppliers and partners who want to align, and position well with clients.”
SBS’s partnerships with Scope3 and Ad Net Zero are also critical to its strategy. By integrating verified emissions measurement into its media planning, SBS ensures that sustainability is tangible rather than just symbolic.
“From an SBS Media perspective, we have clients coming to us, as a supplier, looking for help to understand the scale and impact of their emissions,” said Young.
“Partnering with someone like Scope3 helps us to do this and collaborate to reduce the environmental impact of the advertising. By sharing campaign data, we’re closing the measurement gaps that our clients experience today and replacing ‘proxy measures’ with verified measurement”.
Looking ahead, SBS has set its sights on achieving Net Zero across all operations and its supply chain by 2045. “Success would be absolutely meeting that,” Thomas said. “But more than that, it’s about creating an organisation that’s sustainable, resilient, lower cost and still relevant to Australian audiences.”
She added that while the challenge can feel “existential” at times, progress comes from persistence. “This can be a sort of existential moment of how we’re ever going to do this. You almost need to just switch back off and get on with it, and just keep chipping away,” she said.
