How to Minimize Your Digital Carbon Footprint

In a world that is extremely dependent on technology and increasingly utilizing AI tools and software, we need to keep talking about the negative impacts it has on our environment and our digital carbon footprint. Data growth and collection is increasing at a rapid pace and it is up to all of us to do our part in planning ahead to pursue net zero digital impact.

Why is this important? Is it that big of a deal?

Yes. Data centres take up a lot of energy and require a lot of water to cool down the machines that store the data. There are steps that can be taken to lower the digital impact we are producing on this planet, but only if we all work together globally, just like lowering the planet’s temperature.

According to this excellent article about the threats of digital waste from Loughborough University, “Reducing the Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) of each data centre from above 2.0 down to 1.4 would cumulatively save an estimated 11 terawatts hours of power annually. To put that into context, it is approximately the same amount of energy consumed by a city the size of Hamburg in a year.” Wow.

Have you heard of Dark data and Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) data? Yes, these are real terms used to describe types of digital data waste. Dark data is where companies collect data to only be used once (or sometimes not all), while ROT data is any data that has gone “cold”, or hasn’t been touched in a long time, but requires a lot of energy to keep on hold. These wasteful practices can contribute to up to 88% of the all data being stored in a company. Yikes!

So how do companies clean up their wasteful data collections and plan ahead for the future?

Clean up by looking into the digital files that are the largest and work your way down. Especially those that have not been looked at in years.
Support sustainable web hosting (like BlueHost) and tech companies that support data centres who are transparent about their renewable energy sources, like these rockstars.
Plan ahead by reducing the size of digital files wherever possible and reducing animation or video content where you can. You can use these tools to help with this process, or reach out to their team to get started!

How can you reduce your digital carbon footprint as an individual RIGHT NOW?

Carve out 5 minutes out of your day
Set an alarm on your phone
delete old emails
unsubscribe from unwanted or promotional emails

Viola! You are helping one step at a time every day.

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