What does [ your favourite app ] run on?
Turns out the internet and all the digital products and services within it do not run on fairy dust and copious amounts of coffee. So what DO they run on?
Electricity, of course. And a lots of it.
Quoting from a September 2019 article from Fortune.com:
“Today, data centers consume about 2% of electricity worldwide; that could rise to 8% of the global total by 2030, according to a study by Anders Andrae, who researches sustainable information and communications technology for Huawei Technologies Ltd (Source: Nature.com)”.
The carbon emissions linked to these data centres are substantial: “Data centres contribute around 0.3% to overall carbon emissions, whereas the information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem as a whole — under a sweeping definition that encompasses personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks and televisions — accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. That puts ICT’s carbon footprint on a par with the aviation industry’s emissions from fuel (Source: Nature.com).” …
So, why podcasts?
As curated audio storytelling, podcasts allow frictionless topic discovery and microlearning while getting other stuff done. I listen to them daily: while walking the dog, commuting to work, straightening up the house or working out. I find them to be such an engaging and distraction-free way to immerse yourself in a topic and really connect to what’s being said.
With 2019 coming to a close, I wanted to look back at what I’ve listened to this year and pick the 12 things I’ve learnt through podcasts that resonated with me the most. …
Introducing the second volume of what we hope to be a growing collection of insights on how to absorb sustainability in modern digital and graphic design.
Just before 2019 comes to a close, we wanted to share vol 2 with all of you! Every link featured has resonated with us here at Hyphae in some way, whether by providing sustainable design inspiration or by expanding our knowledge and understanding of earth-friendly visual design.
Happy reading!
Digital
‘Tips on how to reduce the carbon emissions of your WordPress site’
By Hannah Smith
How to set a webpage budget for a greener, faster website
By Wholegrain Creative
Pointless emails: they’re not just irritating — they have a massive carbon footprint
By Stephen Moss, The Guardian
Print & Graphics
The world’s first use of algae ink offset
by Cast Iron…
Introducing the first volume of what we hope to be a growing collection of insights on how to absorb sustainability in modern digital and graphic design.
Given this is vol. 1, we’ll start with the very first reads we flipped through when researching for Hyphae. Every piece featured helped us grow our knowledge and feed our curiosity on what are the boundaries of what we’ve since started calling earth-friendly visual design.
Happy reading!
Digital
How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
Published on Nature.com
How to Reduce Your Internet Carbon Footprint
Published by Ethical.net
Serving.Green
By MightyBites
Print & Graphics
Sustainable Graphic Design Projects: Everything you need to know
By Designyup
Sustainability FAQs
By Cast Iron Design
Building a green business through sustainable collateral design
By…
Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Through the mycelium, a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. It does this in a two-stage process. First, the hyphae secrete enzymes onto or into the food source, which break down biological polymers into smaller units such as monomers. These monomers are then absorbed into the mycelium by facilitated diffusion and active transport (Source: Wikipedia).
We sure appreciate a good metaphor, don’t you? Let us explain, we promise it will all make sense.
When we first started working on Hyphae we found ourselves doing quite a bit of reading, actually a lot of reading! We went down a deep digital rabbit hole in search of insights, guidelines and examples on sustainable design. It is truly amazing how much knowledge and inspiration is just a click away in today’s uber-connected world. …
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