Digital Carbon Footprint
Reducing My Digital Carbon Footprint
What part does the internet play in global consumption & carbon emissions?
Your carbon footprint is greater than just the fossil fuels burned in traveling & construction—it encompasses your digital activities too. As if spam emails weren’t bad enough, an action as seemingly innocuous as a Google search could add to your carbon footprint. Data centers, which are the engines of the Internet, require massive amounts of energy to run & are said to account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions.
We tend to forget about this, but every web search, email sent or received, & status update on Facebook means the consumption of electricity & therefore the emission of greenhouse gases!
Reducing My Digital Carbon Footprint :
Jan 17 <Deleted old notes off NOTES app>
Jan 18 <Unsubscribed from unwanted email lists & newsletters>
Jan 19 <Deleted emails I no longer need>
Jan 20 <Vowed to send less emails>
Jan 21 <Deleted old texts & apps off iPhone, iWatch & iPad>
Jan 22 <Turned off social media notifications>
Jan 23 <Discovered 2 search engines that donate part of their profits to reduce our carbon footprint>
Jan 17, Day 17
<Deleted old notes off NOTES app>
I use my NOTES app on my computer, iPhone & iPad to keep track of articles, webpages & ideas. Whatever I write & save on one device is also accessible on the other devices, making it handy to refer to all this info. Today I cleaned my notes up & deleted ones I no longer needed, freeing up some digital cloud space. Sort of like cleaning out your filing cabinet!
Jan 18, Day 18
<Unsubscribed from unwanted email lists & newsletters>
Manage your subscriptions: If you are subscribed to newsletters, reassess which ones you really need/enjoy reading. Or all those emails from businesses you purchased something from? Do most of them simply sit unopened in your inbox? In that case, it might be time to unsubscribe from some of them. This handy guide shows you the quickest & most effective way to do that depending on what mail program you're using.
Jan 19, Day 19
<Deleted emails I no longer need>
Did you know that every old email stored in your inbox is using up energy? Decluttering your inbox is a quick & easy way to reduce your electricity consumption & shrink your carbon footprint.
Search and destroy: Once a month, scan your inbox for old, unnecessary e-mails that you can delete. Pay particular attention to those with bulky attachments. Empty your Junk E-mail folder regularly.
Jan 20, Day 20
<Vowed to send less emails>
I did not realize the impact of sending or receiving an email & how bad they can be for the environment!
Get an idea of how your emails impact the planet by using the calculator below. Surprising & alarming!
Wow, that’s for an average of 140 emails sent/received a day!!!!
Jan 21, Day 21
<Deleted old texts & apps off iPhone, iWatch & iPad>
By deleting apps & old texts off all my devices, I freed up tons of storage space & now use less cloud storage.
Jan 22, Day 22
<Turned off social media notifications>
I don’t need to get notified anytime someone posts to a certain page or updates their status. I am limiting my exposure to Facebook & Instagram-they are time suckers!
Jan 23, Day 23
<Discovered 2 search engines that donate part of their profits to reduce our carbon footprint>
Heavy search engine usage does have an environmental impact on CO2 emissions. That’s where Ecosia & SearchScene comes in: the CO2 neutral alternative search engines.
SearchScene is a charitable search engine that donates 95% of its profits to charity, focusing on charities that help fight climate change & alleviate the suffering caused by climate change. SearchScene is a unique search engine that allows you to fight climate change without spending any of your additional time or money. You simply do what you do anyway – search the web!
If everyone that used Google switched to using SearchScene, we could plant enough trees to fill the entire Amazon rainforest – not just once, but every year! We could also end world hunger, eradicate polio, provide clean drinking water to millions of children, fight extreme poverty, save the penguins & polar bears, & lots more! And all you need to do is make the switch to SearchScene!
Ecosia, donates 80% or more of its profits to non-profit organizations that focus on Reforestation. Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees! Launched in 2009, Ecosia is possibly the longest running & best known of all charitable search engines. Ecosia not only plants trees, but also provide vital income to the workers who plant the trees in the world's poorest places. Trees tend to be planted in South America, Africa & Indonesia, where the cost of planting trees is lower. For every search made (powered by Bing), the revenue generated goes towards its tree-planting scheme. On average, roughly 45 searches are needed to make a single tree.