Guide to your digital carbon footprint
As digital technologies develop and become more integrated into our working lives, we increasingly hear from cultural organisations who are interested in understanding the carbon footprint of their digital and online activities.
While the term ‘digital footprint’ is generally defined as the traces of data left behind from an individual’s or an organisation’s use of the internet, in this guide we focus on the sustainability aspects of the broader lifecycle of how we use digital technology in the cultural sector. There is a wealth of information out there from sources more specialist to the digital world, so we’ve tried to highlight these where relevant.
This resource covers the following themes:
Physical devices
To get the most out of a device’s production costs, it’s important to think about its repairability and what you’re going to do with it at the end of its useful life. Consider buying second-hand, refurbished devices and find out about local social enterprises that might be able to provide these or use them when you’re finished, such as Edinburgh Remakery and Remade Network. This can also save money.
Further resources on devices
- You can find out more to inform your purchasing decisions of new devices from Ethical Consumer in their technology guide.
- Circular Communities Scotland have a map tool where you can find charities, social enterprises and businesses who can repair and reuse items of all sorts, including IT equipment.
- Look out for the Zero Waste Scotland Revolve accreditation for extra assurance about how second-hand initiatives operate. They also have a map tool where you can locate accredited providers.
Internet use
Since we use the internet so much as part of daily life, it can be hard to think of it as having any physical impact. However, each unit of data we deal with, whether it’s sending an email, streaming a video or saving a file, has energy use associated with it. The more data transfer it involves, the higher the associated energy use is. This happens in two ways. First, in the electricity your device uses to store, process and display what’s happening at the user end. Second, internet and digital service providers store our data in data centres that require electricity and cooling on an intensive level to keep the machines working well.
Rather like the carbon intensity of your energy provider, it’s harder to track and reduce from the consumer end. The most useful way to take action on this front is by researching the lowest carbon options. This requires ongoing research to keep yourself informed on developments – we’ve found the resources below a good place to start.
Data centres vs. the cloud
Globally, data centres account for about 1% of total electricity demand worldwide. A data centre is a server (or collection of servers) which you own, and which store your data. These are typically based in your office or a central location. ‘The cloud’ is where you store your data on someone else’s hardware and infrastructure. Much of the software we use is now ‘cloud-based’, meaning the server is accessed over the internet, with the data centre(s) supporting a cloud server based somewhere else in the world. Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox and Google Drive are all cloud-based tools. Generally, cloud servers are less carbon intensive than the traditional office data centre approach, due to economies of scale and efficiency, but they must be powered by renewable energy for this to be the case.
Video conferencing
Video conferencing is now the main way of ‘meeting’ professionally. Although video conferencing services use the internet (and therefore have the same energy and emissions implications as outlined above), it is often still much less resource-intensive than if a meeting were to happen in person – which would require heating, lighting, travel etc.
Further resources on internet use
- ‘The carbon footprint of the internet’ infographic provides more information and demystifies the internet’s carbon footprint.
- The Greenpeace Click Clean report provides a methodology and framework for how major tech providers stack up in terms of environmental credentials. However, as with physical devices, these supply chains change all the time and the equivalent research to keep up is time consuming, so the most recent report is from 2017.
- RESET – Digital For Good has a host of useful resources and articles relating to the environmental impact of the digital world, from this wider study, to this piece about the impact of individual emails.
- When choosing web hosting and services, check out the Green Web Foundation whose directory includes Wholegrain Digital and Green Hosting as some of their UK partners.
- Microsoft recently launched a Sustainability Calculator for Azure cloud customers, which provides a GHG protocol-compliant report of the emissions from purchased cloud resources. It is currently limited to ‘Enterprise’ customers who use PowerBI, but will hopefully be made more widely available soon.
- ICT Footprint.EU is developing a self-assessment tool to help companies assess their footprint from ICT, including data.
Good housekeeping
Here are some general pointers for efficient use of the internet and data storage that we can all implement in our day-to-day work:
- Choose energy-efficient devices that don’t use more power than they need to, and work with their settings to make sure your device isn’t working when it’s not necessary, eg setting your screen to switch off and your device to sleep after a short period of inactivity.
- Delete emails you don’t need and unsubscribe from mailing lists if you don’t read the emails. The emissions from sending and receiving emails do not ‘belong’ to the sender or receiver, but they do exist, so it’s worth doing what you can to reduce them.
- Be efficient about your digital storage – make sure you don’t store duplicates of the same file and compress files so they take up less space. Perhaps make a recurring calendar appointment to delete old versions of files you no longer need, especially photos and videos which use more energy to store.
- Consider using physical external hard drives for storing old folders and files that you don’t need to access regularly. Unlike cloud storage, these don’t use any energy when you’re not accessing them.
- Close browser tabs and programmes you aren’t using – this minimises the power your device needs to run. In ‘Browser Tabs and Battery Life’ article a science blogger tries to find out about the impact of unneeded browser tabs.
- Find out more – use the resources mentioned here, such as the Wholegrain Digital toolkit, and find others to make sure you stay informed as things develop and ask questions about the environmental impact of digital changes you make.
Creative uses of digital
In 2020, the hashtag #TheShowMustGoOnline trended as artists everywhere got to grips with ways of presenting their work in a world where live arts in person wasn’t a possibility due to COVID-19 restrictions. Some elements of how artists and organisations responded to these conditions were temporary, but some were integrated into future practices or grew into their own new forms. Here’s a brief snapshot of some of the huge range of digital creative work that took place in Scotland during the pandemic:
- National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival was a series of one-person short performances specifically created for an online audience, presented as videos that could be watched by anyone at any time.
- Lyceum Christmas Tales released an advent calendar of stories performed from the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh engaging the audience through specific timings of the releases. They are now available to watch by anyone at any time.
- Civic Digits Theatre Company’s Big Data Show uses the digital form to reflect on the social, cultural and political aspects of the digi-verse itself. Civic Digits are developing this work and will continue to present work that has elements of digital and live performance, intentionally blurring the distinction between the two.
- Paragon Ensemble delivered the development of WHOOSH! online, engaging their performers and creators in online workshops. While they aspire to perform the work live, the company has ambitions to maintain some element of digital workshop delivery, which they found made workshops more accessible for some of their performers.
- Traverse Theatre-produced show ‘The Journey’ uses the viewer’s device to create an intimate and immersive theatrical experience that goes beyond putting a live performance online.
- Lyra Theatre provided Cultural Survival Packs for their young participants in Craigmillar and Niddrie with creative activities physically posted out, in addition to programmes of workshops and performances held on Zoom and workshops presented as short videos to be accessed at any time.
- Alchemy Film and Arts put their 2020 ‘Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival’ online, and for 2021 maintained an element of ‘on demand’ content, allowing audiences from further afield to attend.
- At Culture for Climate Scotland, we’ve found much of our work transferred well to a digital form, in some cases allowing people who wouldn’t have been able to otherwise to join us for events. We were particularly happy with our Cultural Adaptations conference. Our online meet ups and events have continued to connect cultural organisations and artists in their environmental work.
General resources
- Julie’s Bicycle ‘Environmental sustainability in the digital age of culture’ report (opens a PDF) provides a useful overview of how the carbon emissions from our digital footprint and culture intersect, exploring impacts and case studies of good practice.
- The Ericsson Guide provides a really thorough exploration of the different aspects of the ICT footprint, including comparison with aviation and setting it in the context of the social, economic and cultural benefit of digital connectivity.
Next steps
We still have a lot to unpick and learn about the environmental impact of creative digital activity, including the impact of livestreaming performances and making more work available online. We’re actively participating in projects focused on this subject, and will share more information about this when we have it.
We hope this has been a useful introduction to the environmental impact of the wider uses of digital devices and services. If you’d like to share anything or you have an idea for how we can improve this resource, please contact us on [email protected].