Sustainability is one of those topics that everyone running marketing activations agrees matters — until it’s time to actually do something about it.
The goals are ambitious. The jargon is dense. The path forward is unclear. And for the people responsible for producing physical marketing — the signage, the in-store graphics, the large-format campaigns — the question isn’t whether sustainability matters. It’s where to even start.
Sean is Director of Sustainability for the Americas at HH Global – the global leader in responsible marketing activation that helps the world’s most influential brands execute with precision, creativity, and scale. And he’s spent the last five-plus years shaping a sustainability approach that goes far beyond box‑ticking, building a practice that helps clients and colleagues fundamentally change how marketing activations get made.
His big insight? The reason sustainability stalls inside most organizations has almost nothing to do with budget, technology, or willpower.
It’s communication.
David Attenborough Named the Challenge. HH Global is Shaping a Solution.
In 2020, David Attenborough said something that cut straight to the heart of the climate crisis. Not a plea about melting ice caps or rising seas — but something far more fundamental:
“Saving our planet is now a communications challenge. We know what to do, we just need the will.”
Sean credits that line with crystallizing what he’d been experiencing firsthand for years. The will is there — but it doesn’t turn into action unless sustainability is communicated in a way people can understand, apply, and run with.
And right now, that’s where most of the industry is stuck. The people who understand the science can’t always explain it in the language of business. And the people running the business can’t always parse the language of sustainability.
“I think of myself as a translator,” Sean says. “There’s this gap between sustainability jargon and the way businesses actually operate. Someone has to stand in the middle and help make it make sense.”
His role isn’t limited to contributing to sustainability targets or lifecycle assessments. It’s to help translate the dense, jargon-heavy world of carbon accounting, procurement frameworks, and material science into something actionable.
Something a brand manager can run with. Something a field marketer can bring to their next brief. Something a procurement lead can use to make a smarter call on their next order.
That’s harder than it sounds. And it’s rarer than you’d think.
He Didn't Come From Sustainability. That's Exactly Why It Works.
Sean’s path to this role looks nothing like what you’d expect.
He spent years helping to build out supplier relations, then moved through supplier programming, enterprise account management, and sales enablement. Along the way, he kept noticing the same thing: RFPs were increasingly asking about sustainability, and nobody had a cohesive answer.
“It was commercially driven at first,” Sean admits. “We were getting these questions from brands and we didn’t have a formalized way to respond. So I worked with colleagues to help build one.”
He was instrumental in establishing a sustainability task force to catalog the efforts already happening across the company. And when HH Global expanded through its acquisition of InnerWorkings in 2020, the company’s sustainability ambitions and global leadership structure grew with it — a Chief Sustainability Officer joined the leadership team, and Sean stepped into the role of Americas lead, joining directors for Europe and APAC on a newly formed global sustainability team.
What made him the right person for the job wasn’t a degree in environmental science.
It was the fact that he’d spent over a decade learning the commercial side of the business inside and out. He knew how brands thought, how suppliers operated, and where the real friction points lived.
He could speak both languages. And in a field drowning in jargon, that turned out to be one of the most valuable skills in the room.
70-85% of Your Carbon Impact Is Decided Before a Single Print Is Run.
A key part of Sean’s role involves helping brands see where their environmental impact actually comes from.
Because it’s almost never where people assume.
When HH Global conducts lifecycle assessments for custom manufacturing jobs, they analyze carbon impact across four stages: material selection, production emissions, logistics, and end-of-life.
Here’s the number that changes the conversation: material selection alone accounts for 70 to 85 percent of a project’s total carbon impact.
“When people hear that, it reframes everything,” Sean says. “Suddenly you’re not talking about this overwhelming, abstract problem. You’re talking about one decision — what material are we using? And that’s a decision people can actually influence.”
That means the single most important sustainability decision in any marketing activation happens before a single print is run. Before a single truck is loaded. It happens when someone chooses what material to use.
For anyone involved in producing physical brand experiences — whether that’s in-store graphics, signage, event activations, or large-format campaigns — this is both a wake-up call and an invitation.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire supply chain to make meaningful progress.
You need to get smarter about materials.
The 20% Fix That Most Brands Walk Right Past
Here’s an example that sticks.
Reducing the basis weight of printed materials — say, from 100 lbs to 80 lbs — can achieve a 20 percent reduction in material use without any noticeable change in quality.
Same visual impact. Same durability for its intended use. Twenty percent less material — which means less carbon, less waste, and often less cost.
“This is the stuff that doesn’t make headlines,” Sean says. “But it’s exactly the kind of decision that adds up across hundreds of locations, thousands of activations, millions of printed pieces. And it’s the kind of decision someone can make right now, on their very next project.”
Sean’s philosophy is refreshingly pragmatic. The most impactful sustainability work often looks like good operational thinking.
Choosing a less carbon-intensive material. Reducing weight where it doesn’t compromise the end product. Questioning whether you need 10,000 units or whether 7,000 will do the job.
“Sustainability and efficiency are almost synonymous,” he says. “When you reduce material, you reduce cost. When you reduce waste, you reduce spend. The business case and the sustainability case are usually the same case.”
These aren’t radical acts of environmentalism. They’re smart decisions that happen to also be the right thing for the planet.
HH Global Built a Framework So the Entire Supply Chain Could Come Along
One of HH Global’s most ambitious sustainability initiatives has been the development of their proprietary Sustainable Procurement Framework (SPF), with Sean contributing to its evolution alongside the wider sustainability team.
Think of it as a way to bring the entire supply chain along on the journey. Not just the brands at the top.
The challenge Sean saw was that many suppliers — especially smaller ones — wanted to improve but couldn’t afford the cost or complexity of established rating systems.
“There are organizations out there that do rigorous sustainability assessments, but they’re expensive and resource-intensive,” Sean explains. “A lot of our suppliers just don’t have the bandwidth for that. So our team developed something more accessible — a way to support suppliers at different stages of their sustainability journey and help them progress over time.”
SPF communicates HH Global’s sustainability goals, gathers information about where each supplier stands, and provides metrics to track and improve over time.
It’s not a one-time audit. It’s an ongoing conversation.
And that distinction matters. Sean’s approach to suppliers mirrors his broader philosophy: meet people where they are, give them tools they can actually use, and help them get better over time.
Scaling Sustainability Across the Americas.
Here’s a detail that might surprise you.
While Sean works as part of a wider network of sustainability leads and teams in other regions – all aligned to the company’s global strategy – regionally, Sean’s team spanning the entire Americas consists of just two people. Himself and one overseeing Latin America.
“I can’t operate as a purely top-down department issuing mandates,” Sean says. “I have to be embedded — coaching teams, educating suppliers, connecting dots between departments that don’t normally talk to each other.”
Part strategist. Part educator. Part internal consultant.
He describes his day-to-day as a “Jack of all trades” role — one day he’s working with suppliers on emissions data, the next he’s helping a client team rethink materials for an activation, the next he’s aligning internal reporting with sustainability targets.
“Even our largest multinational clients come to us for guidance on this,” he says. “That tells you something about where the industry is. Everyone’s figuring it out. Progress often depends on having the right expertise to translate ambition into action.”[NE4]
This model might actually be more powerful than a large centralized team. For anyone who’s been handed the mandate of “make us more sustainable” without a big team or budget behind them, Sean’s approach offers a blueprint:
Become the person who connects the dots. Translate the jargon. Help people see that the sustainable choice and the efficient choice are usually the same choice.
The Companies Planning For This Now Will Be the Ones Still Standing
Sean is clear-eyed about the challenges that remain. Scaling pilot projects into company-wide solutions is hard. Making sustainability data credible and usable is an ongoing effort.
But the trajectory is unmistakable.
Reporting and disclosure frameworks for environmental impact are proliferating. Expectations are only moving in one direction. And the companies building sustainability into their operations now — not as a side project, but as a core competency — are the ones that will be most resilient and competitive in the years ahead.
“The companies that are planning for this will be more profitable,” Sean says. “This isn’t just about being ethical. It’s about being prepared.”
With sustainability leaders across regions, including Sean Carr, helping translate that vision into action, HH Global is positioning itself as one of those companies.
Five Things You Can Do Before Your Next Activation
You don’t need to be a sustainability expert to start making better choices. You don’t even need a dedicated team. You just need to start asking better questions.
Ask about materials first. Before your next activation, ask your production partner what options exist and what the carbon implications are. That single question puts you ahead of most.
Question the quantity. Do you actually need the volume you’re ordering? Even a modest reduction can meaningfully impact your carbon footprint — and your budget.
Look for the weight. Ask whether a lighter-weight substrate can achieve the same result. You might be surprised how often the answer is yes.
Frame it as efficiency. If you’re building internal support for sustainable practices, lead with the business case. Reducing material, weight, and waste almost always saves money. Sustainability and efficiency aren’t in tension — they’re often the same thing.
Find your ally. Whether it’s someone internal or a production partner who speaks both languages, find the person who can bridge sustainability knowledge and business reality. That’s where real progress starts.
Your Brand Deserves a Production Partner That Takes Sustainability as Seriously as You Do.
At SuperGraphics, we partner with companies like HH Global to turn sustainability commitments into real-world results — through PVC-free materials, our EcoFormat™ Recycling program, and production practices designed to reduce environmental impact without sacrificing quality or speed.
Curious how we can help make your next activation more sustainable?
