Businesses generate a carbon footprint from a number of sources - heating and cooling, production processes, shipping, retail - even staff boiling the kettle for a quick caffeine-boost.
However, one critical area of generation often less considered is the impact of their use of digital - from emails and messaging, to the vast quantities of data many businesses now use to run their operations.
Yet, digital working practices are increasingly a big part of an organisation's total carbon footprint - something that’s a bit less surprising when you consider that global airline emissions are now less than global digital emissions - with the latter growing at a far faster rate.
In this article, we look at what kind of business activities contribute to a company’s digital carbon footprint and have compiled some tips to help with reducing it.
What is a digital carbon footprint?
A digital carbon footprint relates to the greenhouse gas emissions that result from a business or individual’s digital activities, including the devices, platforms and tools they use, both directly and indirectly.
This means that as well as each digital device and the usage of it, you also need to factor in the emissions produced in manufacturing the device, transporting it to where it will be used, the energy it uses when in operation and the energy used by servers and data centres for anything your business does that uses the internet and online data transfer and storage.
What digital business activities have a carbon footprint?
The simple answer is that every single business activity with a digital element has a carbon footprint. That means all electronic devices and any business processes, communications and operations that include anything digital will contribute to the overall carbon footprint. To be more specific, some common sources include, but are not limited to:
- The individual digital devices used and the emissions generated during their whole lifecycle - from manufacturing to disposal.
- Using cloud computing and data storage
- Sending and receiving emails
- Video conference calls
- Creating and running a website
- Content creation - across all platforms used
- Using search engines
- Online shopping
- Physical retail done through digital tills and stock adjusting
- Streaming video and music
- Commercial social media sites and apps
- Ordering materials
- Using AI tools
Measuring a company’s digital carbon footprint
Measuring the digital carbon footprint of a business is a real challenge, as there are so many different factors and variables involved.
Research indicates that a single email sent by someone within the business generates somewhere between 0.03 grams to 26 grams of CO₂e, depending on how long the email is, how long it takes to write and read, the device it is sent and received on, how many people read it and whether it has an attachment.
A one-hour video conference call, with video activated, generates, on average, 157 grams of CO₂e.
Adding these types of activities together for every employee of a business means that it’s easy to see how just small parts of business back-office activity can start to rack up carbon emissions. These two examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a company’s digital carbon footprint. However, just because measurement is difficult, it doesn’t mean that businesses shouldn’t take steps to reduce the emissions caused by their digital activities.
How businesses can reduce their digital carbon footprint
We look at a few tips that many businesses can implement quickly to help reduce their digital carbon footprint without it having a negative impact on their operations or staff.
Limit video calls – audio-only can save up to 96% of emissions
As mentioned earlier, a video conference call can create higher emissions than may be needed, if video can be turned off for most or all participants on the majority of calls. Using just audio on these calls, with video switched off, can result in 96% less CO₂e. Making this a company policy means that businesses that use video calling frequently can make a real difference to emissions.
Minimise email use
Emails are rightly considered to be significantly better for the environment (and quicker) than sending physical letters or documents through the post or via couriers. However, there is still a CO₂e cost to this form of communication for every person who receives an email as well as the person who sends it. To minimise this, you can implement a company policy that requires employees to:
- Unsubscribe from all unnecessary newsletters or marketing email lists
- Think about who is copied in on emails before sending. Does everyone need to be on the recipient list? Consider this before hitting ‘reply all’.
- Delete any promotional or unnecessary emails from inboxes, to reduce the amount of storage needed on the server.
- Compress email attachments or replace them with a hyperlink to an online version of the file or document to reduce the energy needed to send and receive the email.
Use energy-saving measures with digital devices
Whether it’s a desktop computer, a laptop or a smartphone, saving energy is better for the environment and will mean lower utility bills. Some of the simple energy-saving steps you can take include:
- Switch autoplay off on browsers and social media apps so video doesn’t stream unless needed
- Close browser tabs that aren’t being used so that videos aren’t being played in the background
- Dim your screen or monitor by a few percent to help save energy
- Shut devices down when not being used for a few hours, rather than leaving in sleep mode
Lengthen your device replacement schedule
Holding onto your IT equipment and other business digital devices for as long as possible before replacing them means that you’re saving your business the emissions that are generated in manufacturing the new product. Getting existing devices repaired or updated, when possible, instead of replacing them when not essential, can be a really positive change. When it does reach the time to replace devices, look for the most energy efficient models possible that meet your specification to minimise the environmental impact.
Also, you can take steps to get your old devices recycled or reused. There are many businesses out there that will take in old equipment, clean and upgrade them, and give them a new lease of life - saving valuable end-of-life digital carbon footprint emissions.
Look for green cloud storage solutions and other green digital partners
Whether you store basic emails and shared files on the cloud or have an extensive archive of data, records and other documents to keep safe and accessible to your business, looking for cloud storage providers with good green credentials can help you to lower your own digital carbon footprint.
In general, cloud solutions that offer ‘green’ options for storage will usually power their servers with renewable energy, which can considerably cut the CO₂e generated by data centres.
Along similar lines, hosting your business website with a partner offering ‘green’ hosting services can also help you reduce your overall footprint.
Support with reducing your business carbon footprint
With a raft of potential benefits for businesses taking steps to reduce their emissions, we specialise in helping companies to make positive, sustainable changes that have a measurable impact on their CO₂e, throughout the transition to net zero.
You can sign up for free and estimate your current carbon footprint, track your impact and use our resources and tools to assist you along the way.
