Digital is everywhere, and recently we have been considering its environmental cost. Today, the global carbon footprint of digital technology is equivalent to the carbon emissions of civil aviation. Without strong action, this footprint will double by 2030. We are therefore seeking to limit the environmental impact.
Digital consumption is growing exponentially: there are more and more users, more digital and Internet use cases, more and more digital equipment per user, and more and more data produced and/or transferred per equipment. The Digital CleanUp Day, which will take place on Saturday 18 March, is the perfect opportunity to look at the issues related to responsible digital use.
What is your contribution to responsible digital use?
It means becoming aware that digital technology is not immaterial and understanding the negative impact that lies behind the use of the Internet and digital equipment. The digital sustainability approach aims to reduce the ecological and social footprint of information and communication technologies.
Take advantage of this moment to clean up your digital data and delete documents you no longer need.
By deleting your data stored on your equipment and in the cloud, you are first and foremost helping to extend the life of your equipment and infrastructure, as well as limiting your data consumption. The BYforU document management programme was an essential step in managing individual spaces (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive).
2127 TB of
data for Bouygues Construction worldwide, that's 300 million litres of tap
water wasted.
Here are the key steps to a successful cleanup:
1- Measure the volume of your email/OneDrive
2- Delete obsolete e-mails/documents
3- Empty the deleted items
4- Re-measure the volume of your mailbox/OneDrive
Another important way to reduce the amount of equipment manufactured is to extend the life of the equipment. Indeed, the manufacture of digital equipment has a very large footprint, representing 80% of the environmental cost of the equipment. For example, to manufacture a 2kg computer, 800kg of resources (minerals and fossil fuels) are needed*. It will soon be possible to ask your IT department to keep your workstation longer.*
*Source Greenit.fr
3 to 4% of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The sharpincrease in usage suggests that this carbon footprint will double by 2025
+50% of
materials used in a smartphone
It is theextraction of these metals, in finite quantities, that requires enormousresources and is responsible for almost 80% of the impact of digitaltechnology!
34 billion
digital devices in use worldwide*
While themost important part of the impact of digital technology is linked to themanufacture of equipment!
*sources
ADEME/Greenit.fr
Good practices to limit your carbon footprint:
- Raising awareness of the environmental footprint of responsible digital technology, if possible by training in responsible digital frescoes
- Helping to extend the life of digital equipment or giving it a second life
- Contribute to changing habits in terms of data production and transfer
- Contribute to consuming less equipment and storage space