Sustainability in a writer's own practice
1 min read6 pages below
This branch covers sustainability as a duty of the writer's own practice: why it is owed, taking up sustainability work, measuring a practice's footprint and setting a target, cutting the footprint of the working practice and of digital work, and what a client now asks of a supplier. It leaves the subject matter behind it, from what sustainability means and how a footprint is defined to the documents sustainability generates, the claims companies make about themselves and writing about the subject, to sustainability in healthcare, the writer's health and working arrangements to working conditions and your own health, and reporting the climate for the media to reporting subjects that need particular care.
- Why sustainability is a medical writer's professional duty — the duty to be informed, the association's public position, and how far the field had moved by 2024
- Taking up sustainability work as a medical writer — starting a sustainability team at work, communicating for a small nonprofit, and what the work teaches a writer
- Measuring a practice's carbon footprint and setting a target — where medical writing sits in healthcare's footprint, the calculators and their limits, and the target a freelance practice can set
- Cutting the footprint of your own working practice — doing without before substituting, the desk, leaner documents and studies, travel, the commute and the home office, and the less-paper office
- The footprint of AI tools and digital content — the energy and water generative AI consumes, using it only where it adds value, and the carbon in web pages, video and video calls
- Sustainability as a supplier to the pharmaceutical industry — why clients now count a communications supplier's emissions, the leverage a supplier holds, and what a consultancy's own commitments look like