Sometimes things are so easy and obvious that its very difficult to ignore them. How many of you use Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex or Teams for meetings? How many of you use Facetime, Whatsapp or Viber for Video calls?
Well, do you know that you can reduce your environmental footprint in that meeting by 96 percent instantly? You won't need to plant a single tree either. You won't need to expend a single joule of energy actually. In fact it can be accomplished with one keystroke on your laptop or other device. What's more it also facilitates you logging onto that first early morning meeting in your pyjamas. You can freely mouth the words "ah for fuck sake" as another action is allocated to you and no one will be any the wiser.
I am of course talking about turning off your web camera. These were used pretty sparingly pre-Covid and then since March 2020, everybody seems to want the cameras turned on. It was as if some "expert" said it was better to have the cameras on so you could pick up on non verbal cues and see each other and every HR department in the world latched onto it and encouraged their staff to do likewise.
This new nugget of information is a game changer however, as today's companies are either sustainable or pretending to be sustainable. So, by right they should be telling their employees to keep their cameras off, as it is 96% better for the environment. The next time your boss asks you to turn on your Camera, you now have the perfect excuse for leaving it off! There's a few of my more cynical friends reading this, thinking 96%? Ya right... Well, I didnt make it up.
A combined research team from MIT, Purdue University, and Yale University uncovered the impacts the internet has had on the environment. Yes, the shift to a more digital world has made an impressive hole in global emissions overall, albeit most likely a temporary one — thanks in large part to the emissions reductions associated with travel by car, plane etc. The impact of our increasingly virtual lifestyles should not be overlooked however
Maryam Arbabzadeh from MIT was a co-author amd said:
“It is great that we are reducing emissions in some sectors; but at the same time, using the internet also has an environmental impact contributing to the aggregate. The electricity used to power the internet, with its associated carbon, water, and land footprints, isn’t the only thing impacting the environment; the transmission and storage of data also requires water to cool the systems within them.”
A quick internet search helped me to learn that a single hour of streaming or videoconferencing emits between 150 and 1,000 grams of carbon dioxide, depending on the service. By comparison, a car produces about 8,887 grams from burning one gallon of gasoline. That hour also requires 2-12 liters of water and a land area about the size of a mobile phone. Think about all that daily screen time you clock up. That translates to a sizeable environmental footprint.
According to the researchers, if remote work continues into 2022 and beyond, the global carbon footprint could grow by 34.3 million tons in greenhouse gas emissions. To give a sense of the scale: This increase in emissions would require a forest twice the size of Ireland to fully neutralise it all.
Kaveh Madan, another co-author of the study makes a very interesting point too, when saying:
“Banking systems tell you the positive environmental impact of going paperless, but no one tells you the benefit of turning off your camera or reducing your streaming quality. So, without your consent, these platforms are increasing your environmental footprint,”
I know firsthand that many service providers, data centers and large hyper scalers (Google, Facebook etc) have been working to improve operational efficiency to reduce their carbon footprints. They are looking to more sustainable energy portfolios, but measures still need to be taken to reduce the footprint of the product they sell.
Netflix streaming is one to consider in the context of this conversation. Currently, the default for their service is high-definition, putting the onus on the user to reduce the quality of their video in order to improve their carbon footprint. I'd imagine not even 1% are aware that going from HD to SD could make such a difference though.
Arbabzadeh also said:
“We need companies to give users the opportunity to make informed, sustainable choices. Companies could change their default actions to lead to less environmental impact, such as setting video quality to standard definition and allowing users to upgrade to high definition. This will also require policymakers to be involved — enacting regulations and requiring transparency about the environmental footprint of digital products to encourage both companies and users to make these changes.”
It's not just turning off your camera on Zoom or downgrading to SD on Netflix though. Even unsubscribing from some of that junk mail you receive can help. Arbabzadeh goes further saying:
“Right now, we have virtual meetings all over, and we’re spending more of our leisure time than ever streaming video content. There is definitely a paradigm shift. With some small behavior changes, like unsubscribing from junk emails or reducing cloud storage, we can have an impact on emissions. It is important that we raise public awareness so that, collectively, we can implement meaningful personal and systemic changes to reduce the internet’s environmental impact and successfully transition to a low-carbon economy.”
There's lots of food for thought here and I'm definitely going to knock the camera off more often and unsubscribe from a bunch of services. Will I downgrade to SD on Netflix though?? That's the tough one and the biggest contributor, maybe I'll go SD every second week as a start.
What about you? What will you do?
These photos were all sourced on copyright free website Pixabay.com