Digital sustainability - what can you do
On Tuesday 18th of February, amplifi hosted their first webinar of the series on Digital Sustainability. Titled ‘Digital Sustainability: Cutting Carbon Emissions Through Conscious Tech Practices’, our host Christina De Poitiers explored with Bailey Bryan and Chris Lewis from Wholegrain Digital how small changes in desktop practices can cumulatively have huge environmental impact. You can watch the webinar here or read below for key tips.
The webinar had a huge turnout and far reaching impact, welcoming eager businesses within the Tunbridge Wells region and internationally! The webinar focused on reducing energy use through three channels - reducing server load, reducing energy transfer, and reducing device energy consumption.
A poll revealed at the beginning of the webinar that just 24% of the audience felt very confident in taking concrete steps to make their digital practices more sustainable. They were then asked how informed they felt on how to reduce the environmental impact of digital activities, to which only 15% responded ‘very informed’. The webinar felt like a very timely intervention, not only spotlighting the environmental issues that are ingrained into everyday practices of using the internet, but in bridging the local and global information gap. Cameras were turned off for attendees as a requirement as the webinar began, saving up to 96% of carbon during an hour long call.
Chris opened with Wholegrain’s mission - to pursue a greener and resilient internet that is good for people and the planet. Chris furthered that Wholegrain are perhaps most recognised for their original Website Carbon calculator - a savvy and free-to-use tool that gives instant carbon rankings on websites.
Bailey led the bulk of the session which began with exploring some startling figures, including that the ‘internet of things’ accounts for 1.32% of global carbon emissions. Put into perspective, the international aviation industry accounts for 1.14% of global carbon emissions - a mind boggling comparison! Our attitude towards using the internet would certainly be different if we perceived it as more polluting than flying.
The group was guided through a crash course in three elements of Wholegrain Digital’s upcoming toolkit - websites and search engines, emails, and video calls. Alongside their website carbon calculator, they encouraged the audience to use the Green Web Foundation - a resource that reveals if a website runs on green energy. Some simple website, search engine, email, and video call switches that were suggested are summarised below:
Alongside these switches, an important argument was made for how energy consuming AI is. One ChatGPT query uses the equivalent of 20 minutes of light and 10x the energy of a Google search! Adding -ai on Google searches to remove AI generated responses takes 10x the amount of energy off regular searches. In an age where AI is commonplace, attendees were led to consider whether they valued time more, or the environment.
Next steps
We look forward to welcoming you as we continue our series. Make sure that you join us for our next webinar on the 19th March from 9.30am - 10:30am on ‘What is the Circular Economy: What can I do to make my business more circular?’. Tracy Sutton from Root will be our special guest, taking us through ways in which small to medium sized businesses can reduce waste and move further towards circular responsibility. Make sure that you register for tickets here.
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