How digital signage supports corporate social responsibility
A screen that is switched on uses electricity: pretending otherwise would help nobody. So this page answers two questions — what digital signage really changes about your footprint, and what we commit to ourselves, and have done since 2018.
THE FRAMEWORK
What CSR means for a software publisher
The subject is often reduced to a carbon figure. It is wider than that, and that is good news: it gives us levers we can actually pull.
Corporate social responsibility — CSR — is defined by the European Commission as the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society. Put plainly: how a company contributes to sustainable development while remaining economically viable.
So it is not only about ecology. It is also about how you hire, how you buy, and how you treat your customers and your region. To structure our own areas of work we use ISO 26000, the international reference that maps out the scope of social responsibility.
Source: the European Commission’s corporate sustainability and responsibility pages.
The areas we work on
- ✓the governance of the organisation
- ✓labour practices and working conditions
- ✓environmental responsibility
- ✓fair operating practices
- ✓consumer issues and consumer protection
- ✓community involvement and local development
HONESTY FIRST
What digital signage really changes
Six concrete levers, and one caveat worth stating up front.
Let us be straight about this
An installed screen uses electricity, it had to be manufactured, and it will have to be recycled. Going digital is therefore not automatically a gain. What makes the difference are specific choices: how many screens, what size, how many hours switched on, with or without an extra box, and above all what the display replaces.
That is exactly where we can be useful — and it is also why we give you a carbon calculator rather than quoting a percentage saving we could not prove.
The paper you stop printing
Menus, statutory notices, internal memos, floor plans: what changes on a screen is no longer reprinted every time it is edited. This is the most immediate gain, and the easiest one to see for yourself.
Screens that switch themselves off
Automatic shutdown is built into the software by default: screens stop when nobody is looking — at night, at weekends, outside opening hours. It still has to be configured, and we do that with you.
A 5 W player… or no player at all
Our box is a micro-PC drawing 5 W. And when the screen is powerful enough to run the app itself, we leave the box out: one less device is one less thing drawing power.
Your existing screens can stay in service
An older screen becomes usable again by adding our player, and our software works with every manufacturer. Taking over an existing estate rather than replacing it is what we would rather propose.
Electronic ink, when the image barely moves
An E-PAPER screen draws nothing while the content is unchanged, lasts up to five years on a battery and stays readable in bright sunlight. For a price label or door signage, nothing beats it.
Servers in France, with OVH
Your data therefore stays within the European GDPR framework, it travels a shorter distance to reach your screens, and our host publishes its renewable energy commitments.
OUR COMMITMENTS
What we commit to, in plain terms
Not a statement of intent: practices you can hold us to if we forget them.
Environment
- ✓Our software is designed for efficiency: our engineering team, led by our CTO, comes from microcontrollers — squeezing machine time is a habit there, not an afterthought.
- ✓Our servers are in France, hosted by OVH, which publishes its own environmental commitments.
- ✓We recommend the most energy-efficient screens and work with manufacturers committed to reducing consumption.
- ✓We reuse the cardboard boxes we receive for our own shipments, and recycle what cannot be reused. Standard delivery, never express by default.
- ✓Our support team diagnoses and takes over remotely: an engineer only travels as a last resort.
- ✓We travel by electric vehicle, and by train for longer journeys. Our own communications are entirely digital.
Social and ethics
- ✓We have trained interns and apprentices since the company started, and we recruit from schools in our region.
- ✓We insist on a healthy and respectful working environment — it is the condition for trust, not a line on a poster.
- ✓EMITY is active in the Montpellier business community: patron of the 2023 Réseau Entreprendre Occitanie awards, where Gédéon Ruas and Alexandre Voron mentor young entrepreneurs.
- ✓We sit on the board of the Club du Digital Media, to spread good practice among digital signage players.
Sourcing and governance
- ✓We try to source as locally as we can.
- ✓We pick partners who share the same concerns — it is a selection criterion for our reseller network.
- ✓The Replay label, launched by the Club du Digital Media’s CSR policy, gives a second life to equipment replaced during a new installation.
- ✓We favour durable products and keep single-use hardware to a minimum.
WHERE WE STAND
The networks we belong to
A CSR effort on its own does not weigh much. Here is where we carry it collectively.
Réseau Entreprendre Occitanie
A network of volunteer company directors supporting entrepreneurs with strong job-creation potential. EMITY was an award winner in 2019, then patron of the 2023 awards.
Club du Digital Media
A network of more than forty communications and digital signage companies. We sit on its board; it was this club’s CSR policy that launched the Replay label.
French Tech Montpellier
Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole was one of the first metropolitan areas to earn the French Tech label, a national initiative launched in 2013 to accelerate French start-ups.
Business & Innovation Centre of Montpellier
The incubator that recognised EMITY’s concept from the outset. Second-best incubator worldwide in 2018 and in the top 5 in 2019 in the UBI Global ranking.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
What is still ahead of us
You will find no CSR label on this page, for a simple reason: we do not have one yet. Our aim is to formalise our approach — measure it, write the procedures down, have it audited — in order to earn recognised labels.
Until then, what you have read above is what we already do. If you find a gap between this page and your experience of working with us, tell us: that is the only way this page stays true.
To go further, we also keep a longer piece on the environmental impact of digital technology and another on eco-responsibility in digital signage.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
