By the time you sit down and have a sip of your morning coffee chances are you have already fired off a couple of text messages for work or to mates. You have likely already checked your email and maybe sent a few responses. Now you are likely scrolling through your feed on one of your social media channels. Throughout the day you will use your phone for navigation, search the internet, make a few calls, snap some pictures and maybe play a bit of Wordle. So ingrained are these routines that we give very little to what happens behind the scenes to make all of our technology run seamlessly.
Did you know that with each of our daily tech-driven activities – a few grams of carbon dioxide are emitted due to the energy needed to run your devices and power the wireless networks you access? Likely even less on your radar are the sprawling data centres and vast servers required to support the internet and store the content we access over it. Cards on table, the energy needed to send something like a quick email about a meeting or a text about a dinner date takes little resources to send. However, when you combine that online activity happening around the world via billions of people – that is where the problem lies.
Our many devices
Look around where you are reading this right now. If you live in the first world it is tough to escape laptops, desktop computers, tablets, e-readers, smart phones, etc. You may even have more than one of each. According to some estimates, the carbon footprint of our tech, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions. All of these items need power to operate which is part of calculation as far as their environmental impact. Add to that, as the latest and greatest products are constantly being introduced leading you to upgrade. This leads to cupboards overflowing with no longer used items that may very well eventually end up in a landfill.
It will blow your mind to know that, “The average New Zealander produces more than 20 kilograms of e-waste every year – one of the highest per capita amounts on the planet – yet we’re the only country in the entire OECD without a national e-waste scheme. Of the 80,000 or so tonnes of e-waste we produce each year, the best estimates suggest we recycle less than two percent of that total – a mere 1600 tonnes.”1 That may sound bleak but there is a cool company trying to make a difference in this space. Mint is an e-waste recycling company here that has developed a solution to recover precious metals (e.g., gold, copper and lithium) from old electronics, such as computers,phones and televisions. How do they accomplish this? They leverage chemicals and microorganisms to recover more than 95 percent of metals.
What’s up with data?
Physical data centers are the facilities where machines are located and maintained that store the content. Without getting too technical, when you search the internet, write an email, post on your social media pages, in the cloud or anywhere else online it is stored on a server as data. These data centres require an incredible amount of energy to run and keep and cool. Further, often servers are disposed of rather than being repurposed or recycled.
Data traffic is managed via a laundry list of equipment and cables that enable landline-based and wireless-based data traffic which make up the network of the internet. “A Meta study found out, by focusing on electricity alone, that there is a power consumption range of between 0.06 kWh / GB and 136 kWh / GB when data transfers, something equivalent to between leaving a 60 watt incandescent bulb on and driving a mid-sized electric car, both for an hour.”2
What can you do to help?
These complex mechanisms and energy usage sound daunting in scope and nobody wants to return to the Dark Ages. That said, there are some steps that you can take to lessen your impact via the internet.
1. Recycle old devices instead of letting them rot away in cupboards and drawers.
2. Donate old phones to causes that upcycle them and give them to vulnerable populations that may otherwise never have access to mobile technology.
3. Don’t leave your devices plugged in for longer than they need to charge as they will keep using energy even after they get themselves to 100%.
4. Don’t use navigation apps unless you really need to, which will lessen the data you use on the daily.
5. Turn off devices when you are not using them. For instance, your desktop computer is still eating up energy even when you are not using it for work or play. Turn that baby off when you are done with your time online.
6. Clean out your inbox regularly via deleting emails you won’t need again. All of those emails sitting in your inbox are being stored in data centers, which use a lot of energy to power and keep cool.
7. Video streaming is one of the biggest culprits of energy consumption and data use, with Netflix and YouTube representing 50% of all internet traffic at peak times in North America. Be more discriminant of what you are viewing and do away with watching those silly cats playing piano videos.
8. Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read or aren’t interested in that land in your inbox.
9. Choose a cloud provider that uses renewable energy.
10. Be sure to bookmark your favourite sites instead of Googling them each time you want access.
11. Download audio files instead of streaming them.
12. Stream less and go outside and get some fresh air instead.
1. Radio New Zealand, Our gigantic e-waste problem, From The Detail, 5:00 am on 17 February 2020
2. Dr. Constantin Herrmann, October 26, 2020, What Is the Environmental Impact of the Internet