SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS SERIES: THE INTERNET OF THINGS Written by Emma Rix, Sustainability and Accessibility Consultant at Projects, Brighton’s flexible workspace with purpose.
Using the internet isn’t as harmless as you think; if it were a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter in the world and makes up 4% of all greenhouse gases. The internet is not invisible. It is made up of miles and miles of cables, huge energy consuming data centres, and relies on the purchase of consumer equipment. With this in mind, here are 8 small changes with a big impact you can make to minimise your internet pollution:
1. Manners cost nothing… right? WRONG Don’t send an email just to say thanks, in this case politeness is costing the world. If every email-sending UK citizen sent one less “thank you” email, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon per year – the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road. Every email emits 4g CO2, this means 2x email = 1x plastic carrier bag
2. Search with purpose Choose a good search engine like Ecosia that uses the money they make from ads to plant trees. Passionate about reforesting, they publish their monthly financial reports and tree planting receipts for complete transparency.
If you want to be a real internet warrior, switch off the wifi router at night and don’t buy more devices than you need.
6. Simplicity is key Keep your website simple. A page with clean code and a balanced design will load quicker and take less energy than a site full of banners, pop-ups, large photos and external programmes.
7. Unsubscribe… Cancel subscriptions to any newsletters you no longer read. It’s not just for your peace of mind, but for the health of the planet.
8. The price of automation App updates and automatic cloud backups account for roughly 10% of all traffic from mobile phones to servers. Switch off unnecessary cloud backups and automatic app updates. Be mindful of the cloud providers you do use as some are better than others. Apple uses 100% renewable energy and has committed to 100% carbon neutral for its supply chain and its products by 2030. If you’re looking for more sustainability advice, get in touch with Emma Rix for a free consultation emma_rix@outlook.com.
Better than using any search engine is going straight to the www. website. Every search that results in pages of websites requires multiple servers to complete the action. Saving or bookmarking sites you use often helps too.
3. Download over streaming Streaming is relying on a constant feed from servers, where as a download is a one-time surge which is then saved for unlimited use offline. If you do stream, use a wifi connection rather than mobile data (4/5G). Using mobile data is at least twice as energy intensive than wifi.
4. Clean inbox, clean planet Pollution linked to email is due to the storage of messages that require servers. Each email is saved in three copies and therefore on at least three different servers for security reasons. Minimise the impact of your mailbox by deleting and filing to avoid unnecessary storage in data centres. Research by Cleanfox showed that if all UK Internet users deleted their junk emails received in 2020 alone, it would save more than two million tonnes of CO2 emissions. To put that into perspective, that’s the same as 1.3 million polluting cars.
5. Power off At the end of the day do you just close your laptop? If there’s only one small change you make, make it to switch off your devices when you’re not using them. One of the biggest polluting factors of internet usage is the volume of devices connected to the internet.
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Image: Mel Jenkinson director of www. gloworganic.co.uk