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What do we know about our digital life?

We are 5 billion persons, 63% of the world's population using digital resources online.

Nowadays our lives exist in the digital context, in a hybrid between our private, social and working lives.
The technological devices (smartphones,We are 5 billion persons, 63% of the world's population using digital resources online. computers, tablets, etc.) that are present in our daily lives are just the tip of the iceberg and we are the wheels that are connected to this source of interdependence.

All this activity has a huge environmental impact, estimated at around 4% of global CO2 emissions, and the prospect of a significant increase in the resources needed to meet the needs of this entire ecosystem.

Whenever we are online a small amount of carbon dioxide is being emitted, and in our most basic actions nowadays through the use of devices and software we have at our disposal, this small amount is increasing, multiplied by the number of interactions that take place in this digital environment .

Sending an email represents about 4 gr of CO2, if it has an attachment, it can easily reach 50 gr of CO2, which means that if we send an email with an attachment every day at the end of the year we emit about 18250 gr of CO2, similar to boiling 6 cups of tea every day during one year.

Now imagine a normal day in your organisation and try to make a monthly projection and what it represents.

Naturally there are already many digital service providers that have embedded in their systems models of energy cost reduction, as well as the use of energy from renewable sources.

However, if we take into account that the application we are using is on a server that uses renewable energy and assume that our activity has no environmental impact, we are only assuming the tip of the iceberg refered before.

What resources are we using during our digital activity

01. the energy of the device that we use
02. the energy of the wifi network to which the device is connected
03. the transmission of the data over the network
04. the development, maintenance of the software we use
Digital sustainability is only one component of a broader conversation we need to have about responsibly incorporating digital tools and practices into our lives and organisations.

To effectively combat climate change and establish these practices as the norm rather than an exception, we need a much broader part of society to understand and develop tools to raise awareness and adopt measures to reverse these negative impacts on the environment.

Anything we do not do today in this regard has a negative social and/or environmental impact.

We need to act accordingly.