The climate cost of your digital life
This email has a carbon footprint equivalent to boiling the kettle four times.*
Kia ora, welcome to Future Proof.
Thanks for joining me. This week: a trip to the repair café, and is the coalition’s environmental policy undermining a newly minted trade deal? But first: the climate cost of your selfies and Netflix binge sesh.
I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number of photos backed up from my phone: screenshots, sunset snaps, and many, many pictures of my dog.
Collectively, everyone’s data adds up. We’re creating content at a mind-boggling pace and scale: 54,000 photos are taken every second, and this year we’re estimated to create around 120 zettabytes of data. By 2035, data creation is predicted to exceed 2,000 zettabytes. Printing out just one zettabyte would require paper from 20 trillion trees (except we only have 3.5 trillion trees on Earth), or would fill more than 212 billion standard DVDs.
Much of our digital information exists in the “Cloud” – which sounds like an airy, non-physical concept, but in reality is a very physical, very large hard drive somewhere: in a data centre stuffed with servers. These data centres require electricity to power them and (often) water to keep them cool. Millions of servers become e-waste every year. This means that all your digital memories have an environmental cost, as Shanti Mathias points out in this excellent piece.
Consuming data also has a carbon cost. Video streaming takes up the lion’s share of the world’s digital footprint: one hour of watching Netflix emits about 55g of carbon in Europe – a figure that varies widely between users based on the mix of renewables/fossil fuels powering the electricity grid, the resolution you’re watching at, and what sort of device you’re using to watch.
Data centres are responsible for about 1% of the world’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Another estimate puts the carbon footprint of the internet and all its associated gadgets as bigger than that of the airline industry. One silver lining is that the energy efficiency of data centres and devices has improved rapidly, meaning energy demand hasn’t ballooned in-step with the data boom.
Here in New Zealand, Mathias notes, data centres mostly use renewable energy. But if you use an international service like Google, your selfie photoshoots and email archives could be stored in a data centre powered by fossil fuels. As more companies look to build data centres in Aotearoa – including global behemoths like Amazon – we face challenges including water use and growing our renewable energy capacity to keep pace (not just with data needs, but with electrification of other things like transport). The incipient artificial intelligence revolution is set to send the digital economy’s carbon emissions into overdrive, too.
What does this mean for me, and you, as senders of emails and snap-happy smartphone photographers? You can go on a cathartic deleting spree (which has the added bonus of extending the life of your gadget) but really, the climate impact for an individual is pretty negligible. Even streaming your favourite show is a fairly low-emitting activity, in the scheme of emitting activities.
Nonetheless, I think there’s something valuable about being more considered in our digital habits: deleting the duds and only keeping the best, unsubscribing from emails that encourage us to buy, buy, buy, unscheduling Zooms that could be emails instead. And more often, simply switching off.
*Two boils of a kettle filled 500mL emits 12g CO2 equivalent, according to the Ministry for the Environment. A long email can have a carbon footprint up to 26g CO2.
How you can stay informed the year the world votes
Two billion voters are set to go to the polls in 64 countries this year. One of the perks of being a Spinoff member is receiving The World Bulletin, a weekly newsletter rounding up global news. Edited by Catherine McGregor, it’s sent to members every Thursday. Becoming a member means you’ll not only help sustain local journalism but stay on top of consequential world news, see less advertising, be able to comment on the Spinoff and more. Join today.
‘War on nature’ puts EU trade deal at risk
The NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement comes into force today, and WWF-New Zealand is warning that New Zealand already risks breaching the deal, which includes a commitment by both parties to not “weaken or reduce the levels of protection afforded in its environmental law in order to encourage trade or investment” and a sanctionable commitment to “effectively implement” 2030 climate targets. Citing the Fast-track Approvals Bill and the oil exploration ban reversal as examples of policies that undermine the deal, WWF CEO Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb says, “New Zealand’s war on nature is quickly putting us out of step with the rest of the world and with the demands of our international consumers.”
Make do and mend
A toaster, a SodaStream machine, a pair of garden secateurs: these are a few of the everyday items brought to Auckland’s Repair Café on the afternoon The Spinoff’s Shanti Mathias visited. The Repair Café is part of an international movement where volunteers help to fix things. And if a Right to Repair bill gets through parliament, fixing things could become a lot easier.
The new TV series fighting food waste
Food Rescue Kitchen is television with a mission, aiming to highlight New Zealand’s $1.2 billion food waste problem. Top chefs are challenged to create a three-course feast for the local community using rescued ingredients. “As a viewer, it’s astounding to see the kinds of rejected food that Food Rescue Kitchen helps divert from landfill,” writes Tara Ward. Presenter Naomi Toilalo says she hopes the show will inspire people to tackle food waste in their own lives.
More on food waste from the Future Proof archives:
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More stories
Is New Zealand bringing in Indonesian coal “every month” to keep the lights on, as Shane Jones claims? RNZ’s Eloise Gibson untangles New Zealand’s coal conundrums.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration introduces new regulations that could spell the end of coal-fired power plants in the US.
New Zealanders are getting the hang of how to reduce personal carbon emissions, according to a new poll (but one-third still reckon recycling is effective).
A Nobel Prize-winning economist called for a climate tax on billionaires at the G20 Summit.
Boardrooms should prepare to get uncomfortable in a “spiky” climate transition, writes business leader Dame Therese Walsh.
South Korea’s highest court begins hearing Asia’s first climate-related legal case, brought by a 200-strong group including young activists and children.
A car ban and Indigenous-led sustainability measures make this Colombian Amazon town a poster child for green tourism.
The EU has quit the Energy Charter Treaty over concerns it undermines climate action. (New Zealand is not a member.)
In Nigeria, a long-standing culture of mending and tailoring fashion is still going strong.
To finish this issue, what does polar climate data sound like when played by a string quartet? A geo-environmental scientist from Japan composed a piece based on 30 years of climate data from the Antarctic and Arctic. Hiroto Nagai, the composer, says he hopes the music will connect listeners to climate change on an emotional level. “Upon listening, my initial reaction was like, ‘What is this?’” said one violinist who played in the inaugural performance of the piece.
Climate action always hits the right notes,
Ellen
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I love unsubscribing from mailing lists. Even tech people I work with always seem surprised when I mention the environmental impact of email. It's such a small, easy, thing to do. Cleaning up my other data is much, much harder...
I had an amazing time just before the pandemic, working out my redundancy period, cleaning out my emails. I got rid of 10,000.
I try not to back up all my photos in the 'Cloud' and delete them from Google Photos on a regular basis, but save them on my devices. I have filled one 50 GB email address largely full, through blogging. I now only blog photos of 1 MB or less, havng changed my email address to start another 50 GB and moved my blog to another provider. Generally, I do all my backing up between my phone and my tablet, occasionally onto an external hard drive (but I need to use my ancient laptop for that) and frequently on to a 128 GB memory stick. To be honest, I don't trust the 'Cloud' to look after my important photos, articles I've written and so on.
I write a lot of emails, because they are cheaper and more efficient than printing out letters. When I reply, I always include the original email under my reply. I try to remember to delete all the others below that. I save all my Sent emails, and delete all the others, knowing that I have old letters from my friends safe in the Sent folder. I delete all the newsletters, charity appeals, etc, when I've read/responded to them. If you do these things routinely and often, it does help to reduce one's carbon footprint and prevent overloading one's devices' memories.