Most people know by now about how the airline industry accounts for around 3% of the worlds carbon emissions, but little do we realise our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions. Worryingly, the 2020 pandemic and social lockdown, has caused a huge surge in digital usage globally since these statistics were calculated—working from home with our virtual meetings and endless video calls to enable us to stay connected will have impacted our environment on a much larger scale.
The BBC are now covering stories about our internet habits, and the Scottish Government are actively encouraging us to work towards becoming a Carbon Zero society, it seems we are on the cusp of a Digital Transformation in favour of the environment.
How is our Internet usage impacting the environment?
It’s likely that you’ve already been online today, messaged your friends in a group chat or two, browsed the internet for something and perhaps checked your emails a few times. Our digital habits have become second nature to us. We check our phones, social media and work platforms throughout the day and may even turn to streaming films and music in the evening.
We aren’t all aware of our impact yet, but each of these online activities comes with a small cost – a few grams of carbon dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere each time you use it. These small amounts of greenhouse gasses can quickly add up, when you consider it on a daily, global scale.
Less obvious to the average digital browser, are the data centres which support the Internet. These are a much bigger contributor to the CO2 problem. These large-scale centres hold millions of large servers and they are powered up all day every day. They run constantly, to allow us to access information on the internet and because of this they consume large amounts of energy to ensure they don’t overheat and fail.
Unbelievably, 40% of all of the energy used to power the internet is used to keep those servers from overheating. They have large fans, blasting them with cool air. These data centres all pull energy from whatever power grid they rely on, and sadly, most of this energy is currently produced by carbon polluting sources.
This has been a worsening issue for many years, in 2012 there were 500,000 data centres worldwide. The internet has continued to expand and today there are a whopping 8 million data centres worldwide. It doesn’t stop there, the data centre pollution is expected to grow to 14% of the world’s carbon emissions, by 2040.
The digital environment is going green
It is time to make another change, this time it’s a change to our digital marketing—if you don’t have time to completely overhaul your strategy at least make a simple swap to Green Hosting.
Scottish Government has an announced that it is working towards “Scotland becoming a net zero emissions society by 2045”. It’s the perfect time to invest in your website and reduce your impact on the environment while you do it, be a champion for change.
In the last decade we have seen businesses switch from paper to paperless, and from relying heavily on post and direct mail to moving online. It’s time now to take the next step on the journey, and Creative Twist can support you on your journey to become Carbon Zero. If you’d like more information on hosting your website in an eco-friendly way, please click the link or get in touch.
Creative Twist
Whether you seek to develop a brand identity for your product or service, require a new website, or need some stylish marketing collateral Creative Twist will be happy to help you look slick and help you drive your business in the right direction.
