Hidden Cost of a Digital Life
By Jennifer Ruggiero
Did your cat do something adorable… again? Then you just had to take another picture of their overwhelming cuteness? With a touch of the finger, you’ve captured their greatness!
Digitalization has paved the way to effortlessly capture, sort, and track memories, communications, and activities. It’s a generational meme that younger people will never know the struggle of deciding if a picture was worth taking because there are only twenty-four pictures. Only then to wait weeks to get it developed and find out someone sneezed. Now it’s easy. Grandma sneezed but everyone else looked good. Might as well keep it, it’s not taking up any space.
However, there is a hidden consequence. In fact, there are consequences for all our digital activities. Just like physical objects, a digital presence carries an environmental impact. Instead of accumulating clutter, as digital citizens, we now accumulate dark data.
Dark Data is…
Dark data is defined as “the information assets organizations collect, process, and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes such as analytics.” It still applies outside of organizations via our emails, photos, files, basically anything we store on the cloud, send, post, or event search. In Britain, OVO Energy found that more than 64 million unnecessary emails were sent. Think of one-line emails such as “OK,” “Thanks,” and such. This led to the production of carbon equivalent to 81,152 one-way flights from Madrid to London.2
Over 3% of global greenhouse emissions are generated through digitizing our lives. This is expected to keep growing. However, reducing this inconspicuous carbon consumption couldn’t be easier. Whether it is sending or storing, ultimately reducing consumption and/or use is the best way to decarbonize our lives. And all that is needed is to curate your digital presence a little and hit that delete button.
Some examples include:
- Spam emails are the easiest target, especially if you have a dedicated email to give out so your personal email isn’t bombarded. Delete the emails from the inbox and clear out the trash folder.
- Review subscriptions and unsubscribe to those emails you don’t need or read.
Files
- Go through old folders and remove any duplicate or obsolete files.
- Check note taking apps.
Internet Browser
- Browsers such as Ecosia offer a way to do carbon neutral searches.
For more tips about decarbonizing your digital presence check out the World Economic Forum.
