Digital Era: The Latest Catalyst For Pollution

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

The Digital Era brought forth a shift from an industrial-based to an information-based economy. It was seen as a huge advancement from the more visibly waste inducing Industrial Era. But, unfortunately, progress comes with a price. The stakes for our planet might just be as high as during the Industrial Revolution. Digital advances have given rise to the pollution which has continued to reduce the quality of our lives.

Did you know that every digital-related action we take, causes pollution? It is known as Digital Pollution.

The Shift Project has revealed that, in 2020, digital accounts for 3.3% of world energy consumption. As the world still mostly gets its electricity from fossil fuels, this means that every little digital action we take produces carbon dioxide.

According to experts with Digital for the Planet, there are 3 main sources of digital pollution:

1. Manufacturing: Manufacturing of digital devices requires energy and resources. It is estimated that there are at least 40 metals present in a smartphone, and building a laptop requires 240kg of fossil fuel, 22kg of chemicals, and 1.5 litres of water. So, the habit of changing our phones, tablets, and computers as soon as a new version appears is very harmful to the environment.
2. Practices: Every time you perform simple daily actions like browsing a website, sending and receiving email, using an app on your phone, saving a file to your cloud drive or searching Google, data gets transferred between your device and the server that the website, app or software is hosted on. Data centres are considerably polluting and servers, which are the data centres units, generate tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
3. E-waste: Digital products, when used and thrown away, become e-waste, which pollutes the environment and can be dangerous for people’s health. E-waste contains 5 of the world’s 6 most dangerous pollutants listed by Green Cross International. The 710 million electronic devices manufactured in 2015 generated 1.5 million tonnes of waste and are the equivalent of 166 times the size of the Eiffel tower. Only 1% of mobile phones are recycled.

There seems to be so little awareness and information about digital pollution. I couldn’t even find an actual definition for the term.

But, it's still not too late. There are ways that you can reduce your digital carbon footprint: (And yes, I see the hypocrisy, the research I did for the article has also emitted at least 100g of CO2 and this article will also end up stored on a server, hundreds or thousands of miles from your home.)

1. Choose URLs over search engine queries. Add often used websites to your favourites. This prevents your search from going back through the search engine and/or data centres.
2. Close tabs that you do not use.
3. Use USB devices to transfer a file to a co-worker.
4. And if you need to send a large file, use a web hosting site, like WeTransfer, or Google Drive. This prevents the file from being stored on multiple servers.
5. Choose TV over streaming. And if that’s not an option, avoid HD streaming. When streaming, you consume between four to ten times less energy than watching in high definition.
6. Delete the apps you don’t use.
7. Unplug your phone when it’s done charging.
8. Find out if your region has e-waste recycling facilities. Make use of such services instead of disposing of your electronic devices in the garbage.

Digital pollution is still a mystery, but we need to get involved before it gets inevitably too late.

P.S. Email is also one of the leading causes of Digital Pollution. Learn more about it here.