As the 26th annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) draws to a close we’ve been thinking about how every area of our lives has a carbon footprint – and how that applies to our digital habits too. So we’ve been on a mission to find out if we can quantify the carbon cost of our digital habits. Here’s what we found out:
It became clear to us as we were researching this piece that all the bags for life and recycling in the world isn’t going to help the planet if we carry on upgrading our phones and sending emails the way we all are at the moment. It may be unpalatable, but our digital habits have a huge carbon impact. Streaming video and music accounts for the biggest big chunk of the world’s internet traffic and it’s a usage that’s exploding.
The five billion plays clocked up by just one music video – the hit 2017 song Despacito – consumed as much electricity as Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic combined in a single year. Total emissions for streaming just that song are over 250,000 tonnes of CO2.
Rabih Bashroush, EU Eureca project
So, here are some relatively simple fixes if you want to reduce the carbon cost of your own digital habits.
For more ideas on how to fix your digital habits to improve your health and wellbeing – and the planet’s, pick up a copy of our new book: ‘My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open’.
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