The Digital Carbon Detox
Joshua Stehr
Freelance Service & Product Designer for Climate & Social Impact | Regenerative Food & Agriculture | Circular Economy | Built Environment ?????
Want to improve your mental health and reduce your CO2 emissions? Try a Digital Carbon Detox!
According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group, the internet is responsible for around 2% of the world’s total emissions - comparable to the aviation industry (about 2.5% of global emissions according to Our World in Data)!
We talk a lot about giving up flying for climate change, is it time we started talking about how we spend our time online, too?
Not only can changing our online habits be great for the planet, but it also has the added benefit of improving our mental health. But where are the most impactful areas to focus on? Let’s find out!
A few notes before we start
As of writing this blog, my inbox stands at 12,942 unread emails ?? Aside from the horror that at least half of you are probably experiencing right now, just how much emissions is that producing?
Impact
Interesting quotes
Although the majority of emails sent are spam, these messages account for only around 2% of the total footprint of your email account, because although they’re a pain, you deal with them quickly. A genuine email has a bigger carbon footprint simply because it takes more time to deal with.
So my unread emails aren’t so bad after all? ??
The long email sent from a laptop has 1/20th the footprint of a letter. That looks like a carbon saving unless you end up sending 20 times more emails than the number of letters you would have posted. This is a good example of the rebound effect - how a more efficient technology typically results in higher-carbon living because our usage goes up by even more than the efficiency improvement.
How Bad Are Bananas? p-16 & 17
What can we do?
Despite media stories, on a personal level, the impact is negligible. The most important thing to focus on is to make sure the email is never created in the first place.
If you really want to level up, why not persuade your company to improve its email habits? In a recent workshop I ran on this topic, one person told me that their company email signatures have a video embedded - just changing this to text only would have a massive impact on emissions.
???Searching
Google claims to have been carbon neutral by 2007, but as this piece in Wired explains, that’s “only if you count the facilities it owns and not the factories that make its products and ship them.” In any case, let’s find out how much a google search emits:
Impact
Interesting quote
Google searching accounts for almost 630,000 tonnes of C02e per year. That sounds like a big number, but is less than 0.0001% of humanity’s carbon footprint.
How Bad Are Bananas? p-18 & 19
What can we do?
?? ???Video calls
Since the pandemic, we’ve spent much more of our lives on video calls instead of meeting face to face or travelling in for meetings. Aside from the dreaded zoom fatigue, what impact do all these video calls have on our emissions?
Impact
Based on a Zoom call
Interesting quote
The chief footprint of a Zoom call is the embodied emissions* from your hardware - the actual call is pretty minimal and not much different to regular computer use. But the emissions you avoid can be of a whole different order.
How Bad Are Bananas? p-25
*Embodied emissions are the sum of greenhouse gas emissions released during the following life-cycle stages: raw material extraction, transportation, manufacturing, construction, maintenance, renovation, and end-of-life for a product or system.
What can we do?
???Using a smartphone
As Not Less But Better (a company dedicated to making learning healthy smartphone habits easy and accessible) says “it's a great feeling to have the knowledge of the world within reach, to receive a message with a picture of a loved one, or to immerse yourself in blogs or to be inspired by podcasts…but problematic smartphone use can lead to negative consequences for our mental health. From difficulties concentrating to stress, anxiety and sleeping problems to depression. Problematic smartphone use is a real problem for our health.”
Aside from the well-documented mental health benefits, what impact does smartphone use have on the planet?
Impact
Interesting quotes
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The vast majority of a smartphone’s emissions come from its manufacture and transport to the user, in particular, because of the precious metals and rare earths that need to be mined for smartphones’ chips and motherboard and because people often replace their phone much earlier than necessary
It would take 34 years of average use for the footprint of the electricity you use to equal the footprint of the phone itself. So, if you keep the phone for twice as long, you almost halve the total annual footprint.
How Bad Are Bananas? p.116
What can we do?
Considering most of the emissions come are embodied in its manufacture and transport, for reducing our environmental impact, the primary focus should be on making it last as long as possible.
Campaign for policies like the Right to Repair Act - government legislation that would give consumers the ability to repair and modify their own consumer products (electronic, automotive devices etc.). Manufacturers often restrict access to tools and components or put up software barriers that hinder independent repair or modification.
???Computers (and using them)
Just like smartphones, we spend huge chunks of time on our laptops. Last week I spent an average of 6hrs 54mins per day on my laptop
Impact
The computer itself
Using it
Interesting quotes
A new laptop has the footprint of a flight from London to Rome — but its use is low-carbon.
If a laptop were just a lump of plastic, steel and semiconductor, you could get its footprint to something like 10kg CO2e. The problem is that microprocessors come in at around 5kg CO2e for a 2g chip.
How Bad Are Bananas? p.129 & 130
What can we do?
Similar to smartphones most of the emissions are embodied, so again, let’s make it last as long as possible!
If you’re using a company laptop, encourage them to help you repair and maintain it, and buy second-hand if you need a replacement. It will save money for them too - so it’s a win-win!
???Cryptocurrencies
This is a huge topic so I won’t get into the weeds, but if this is an area of interest for you and you’re actively investing, it’s worthwhile to understand the impacts because they are huge and growing rapidly.
Impact
Interesting quotes
In just a decade, cryptocurrencies have eaten up 0.12% of the world’s carbon footprint
Currently, a whopping 0.3% of global electricity is used for Bitcoin alone, and 0.5% for all cryptocurrencies.
How Bad Are Bananas? p.164 & 165
What can we do?
???Cloud storage and data centres
Impact
160 million tonnes of CO?e in 2020
Interesting quote
Data centres use about 1% of global electricity and 0.25% of its footprint
How Bad Are Bananas? p.166 & 167
What can we do?
Time to detox ?? ♀?
I hope that you feel empowered to take action and can direct you're energy to the most impactful online habits and feel less guilty about the low-impact ones.
I ran a digital carbon detox session with the Climate Action Community in Berlin, here are just a few of the actions we took together - we deleted old email accounts, unsubscribed from newsletters, set up app limits and downtime on our devices, changed our default search engines to Ecosia, opened a business bank account with an ethical and sustainable bank, and started preparing cases to make changes in our companies.
Why not get a group of friends together and make a fun session out of it?
Follow me for more posts like this, and let me know if there are other topics you'd like me to write about!
Freelance Service & Product Designer for Climate & Social Impact | Regenerative Food & Agriculture | Circular Economy | Built Environment ?????
2 年I ran a live digital carbon detox session last week with the wonderful Climate Action Community in Berlin - https://www.instagram.com/climateaction.berlin/ Here are just a few things we managed in just 30 minutes: ? Added a news feed eradicator for social media (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg) ? Changed our default search engine to Ecosia on our devices ? Found a Hotmail account and deleted it ? Added the great suspender to freeze tabs while not using (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/jaekigmcljkkalnicnjoafgfjoefkpeg) ? Unsubscribed from loads of newsletters ??Set up app limits and downtime on our devices ? Opened a new sustainable/ethical business bank account