The internet is less green than you’d think
Four facts you should know about the environmental impacts of our online activities.
Digital services are already part of our everyday lives, and they have a fundamental role in helping us cut down tonnes of physical resources. But have you ever wondered how many carbon emissions are generated by online activity?
#1: The energy used in our digital consumption collectively emits the equivalent amount of carbon as the entire airline industry
The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them accounts for 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions: manufacturing and shipping hardware, powering and cooling computers, and data centers. Add to that all our online activities, such as search engines, social media, e-mails, streaming video, cloud-based services, and so on.
#2: One email can emit up to 50g of CO2 — more carbon footprint than a standard plastic bag
It would be very difficult to stop using emails, and we are not telling you that you should! Emails are essential channels of communication, and we also send them at Cocoon.
We just want to let you know that emails also have a carbon footprint. It can vary from 0.3g CO2e (for a spam email) to 4g CO2e (for a regular email) and even get to 50g CO2 (with a photo or heavy attachment).
Considering the amount of emails used daily, we would like to suggest rethinking what you want to write and how. Keep it simple, polite, and meaningful. Avoid chain emails sent in a hurry that lead to 10 emails exchanged when 1 would suffice. And is it really necessary to always “reply all”? We can also reduce our internet carbon footprint by using renewable-powered cloud services. And, by the way, take this opportunity to finally unsubscribe that newsletter email that keeps arriving in your inbox but you don’t really read anymore.
Essentially, no one will stop using emails anytime soon, but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to reduce our impact. Hope you already took a few ideas about where to start.
#3: Fast websites are better for the environment
How about that? We already knew that faster websites were better for our patience, but turns out it also has an environmental impact.
When a page is taking time to load, it’s not only boring for its visitors. It’s also sucking up energy from the server, using electricity. In conclusion, the quicker the website loads, the more environmental.
Having this into account is a golden rule for website building. And let’s face it, advocating for faster loading pages in the name of the environment, sounds like a win-win situation.
#4: The industry that delivers internet, video, voice and other cloud services is responsible for up to 3.5% of global carbon emissions
Music, gaming, email, streaming video, e-commerce, and social media are all activities that are increasingly performed online. This means that a lot of new data is being stored and transferred to and from data centers.
Data centers are buildings that house computers storing all the website’s data and they require enormous amounts of electrical energy to operate. They generate a lot of heat, meaning that they rely on energy-sucking cooling systems to prevent the servers from overheating.
The demand for data centers and networks is expected to continue to grow strongly — the internet traffic has tripled since 2015! Fortunately, several big hosting companies are investing in lowering their environmental impact. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google are taking steps to green their cloud. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are being used to power Apple’s data centers, for example. Microsoft has committed to using 100% renewable energy in all of its data centers by 2025.
As for us — the consumers — we can do a few things to lower our data demand, and therefore our digital carbon footprint. For example, turn off the auto-play, let the data come to you only when you decide to use it, instead of automatically. And if you just want to listen to music, maybe there’s no need to use a video streaming platform, like YouTube, when there are other ways to accomplish your goal and simultaneously use less data.
We can’t ignore the environmental impact of this on the world. It’s our responsibility to place sustainability at the center of digital transformation.
This article was written with the contribution of Sara Leal.
References:
Climate Care — The carbon footprint of the internet
University of Bristol — Rethinking Digital Service Design
Whole Grain Digital — 17 ways to make your website more energy efficient
BBC Future — Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think
Mantu — Solving the e-waste problem
