Why should we care about our Digital Carbon Footprint?

If you are reading this you probably carry a reusable water bottle with you, you have reduced your meat consumption, you commute to work by bike and most importantly, you feel good about it. Also right now you are looking at a screen, probably on your phone, the one that you plug onto the electricity every night and is (at this very moment) downloading unnecessary data and running unnecessary apps and all that it is, not surprisingly, emitting CO2.

While reducing our carbon footprint in these aspects of our everyday life, we often forget a completely different but not less important part: Our digital activities.

Digital communication, especially in advertising and websites, is often focused on big pictures, videos and as much motion effects as possible. And that’s just great! Who doesn’t love to watch entertaining videos and get inspired by beautiful pictures. As creators, we want to catch the user’s attention, create an online experience and trigger emotions. As consumers, we are hungry for more, almost addicted to animated content. But all these activities transfer a huge amount of data and therefore increase our carbon footprint. A correlation we are still too often not aware of.

But does the impact of digital activities really play a significant part in carbon emission? Let’s check the facts:

Over 4 billion people connect to the internet on a daily basis, and although the energy that is needed to read this article or send a message is small, the overall consumption of electricity needed for each tiny transaction certainly adds up. According to estimates, the usage of electricity on digital devices is currently responsible for 3.7% of the world’s emissions — near to the number of emissions produced by one of the most criticised industries, the airline industry, and guess what, it is predicted to double in the next 5 years (1).

In other words: transferring data generates carbon emissions, and those emissions are responsible for climate change.

What we can do better

First things first, and realising the potential damage is a huge first step to take. Now, don’t panic, you don’t need to change the industry in which your business is based, instead, look closely at your habits and the kind of usage you give to your tools.

There is no definitive formula to calculate your real digital footprint, but a combination of the following list can help you start somewhere and prevent draining energy resources unconsciously.

1. Use technology in moderation

• If your business happens 100% online it does not mean that you need to be 100% of your time online. Often creative techniques are taking place in the analogue world: mind mapping, moodboards and collages, brainstorming, scribbling…And maybe those emails could have been meetings ; )

2. Limit the amount of light emitted by screens

• Working from a well-lit room can help you compensate for the brightness of your monitor or simply get used to a lower brightness — will also help you to sleep better.

3. Reduce the number of gadgets & devices

• Your personal phone, your work phone, your laptop, desktop, second monitor, printer and eReader. Obviously the more gadgets you have the more chances you’ll have to produce digital carbon footprint. Try to buy less and use them consciously or even rent them — recently studies show that although few consumers choose to rent technology because of environmental reasons, renting tech is becoming the new form of tech consumption and it does promote circular economies (2) (3).

4. Store data locally on your device to minimize data transfer

• Sending data daily to your colleagues generates greenhouse gasses. Store data locally and limit working from the cloud unless your provider is using renewable energy (4).

5. Choose the right format

• Today the average website is 6MB (it doubled since the past 3 years) and the trend seems to go higher. The reason? Videos. And also images. These two are not only going to bloat your website but also generate dirty carbon emissions. Analyse if they are the right format for your product or campaign, for example, note that carousels are the least efficient way to showcase images and using vectors, graphics or illustrations are excellent ways of reducing emissions (5).

6. Compress data quality

• Always compress to the greatest amount possible. There are tools out there that can help you reduce the size of your images without losing quality (shortpixel). Also, load images at the correct size.

7. Simplify processes

• Reduce tools by choosing the ones that help you work efficiently and create your very own workflow. So before you start a task instead of opening your default Adobe to go program(s), analyze what tool or sets of tools will allow you to work more effectively. This will reduce your carbon emissions as you’ll stop going back and forth from programs that didn’t do the right job, by not having 5 programs running at the same time and by boosting your productivity — the least time you spend on your computer, the better!

8. Work off-line

• As simple as it sounds, working off-line is more sustainable. The internet consists of interconnected physical infrastructures that consume a lot of natural resources. Just by turning off your wifi every now and then, you’ll be saving energy, plus, it prevents distractions and will help you stay focused.

9. Informe yourself

• Well yeah, information is power. Find what are the emissions from the tools you use — for instance, Ecosia’s search engine as opposed to Google reduces CO2 emission and it uses 100% renewable energy (6).

10. Design products with low impact

• Most importantly, if you and your team are about to bring a new product into the market, make sure that it uses the least amount of energy and material resources possible. For example, if you are developing a website, use lazy loading images and avoid video auto-play. It is our responsibility as designers and creators to stop generating (digital) waste.

Yes, the assimilation of technology into our daily lives is unavoidable and don’t get me wrong, it is a beneficial thing too. But it’s wasteful consumption and without limitations contributes to carbon emissions and its damage can be significant. The digital revolution is here to stay! — but it is essential to take the environmental impact seriously and make our digital footprint a conscious part of our lives.

1. https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html
2. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-releases/2015/consumer-goods-brands-that-demonstrate-commitment-to-sustainability-outperform/
3. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/generation-rent-how-millennials-are-fueling-the-rental-economy/
4. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-google-microsoft-green-clouds-and-hyperscale-data-centers/
5. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/generation-rent-how-millennials-are-fueling-the-rental-economy/
6. https://www.ecosia.org/