5 Eco-Friendly Actions to Reduce Digital Pollution

Guillaume Guersan of Wisper discusses how to lower digital pollution at home and in the contact centre.

Addicted to your phone, to emails and connected objects, dependent on the latest applications?

These generalized behaviours in our society, which perhaps concern you, have an unfortunately invisible energy cost. Despite the 2.5 billion Internet users, and among them more teleworkers each year, web players generate 4% of CO2 emissions in the world. Digital pollution is a very real challenge. Wisper has taken this turn and is now looking for more digital sobriety.

Without further ado, here are 5 eco-friendly actions to help you reduce digital pollution.

Eco-gesture # 1: Optimization of Equipment to Reduce Digital Pollution

From the moment of purchase, choose equipment suited to your needs. For work and for using software and word processing, you need a computer. For research and consultation of information, a tablet or smartphone will suffice. By increasing the number of connected objects at home or in the office, your uses and your digital impact are likely to increase.

Before committing to any replacement of your equipment, a visit to the repairer will make it possible to establish a diagnosis: change one of the parts or buy a durable device with less environmental impact. And to reduce your energy bill, turn off your television boxes and Internet boxes that consume at night and during your absence.

Eco-gesture # 2: Cleaning the Mailbox to Reduce Digital Pollution

Monday, 9 am at the office, you open your mailbox and discover 50 new messages, spam and newsletters! If you have the courage, do a thorough manual cleaning. Otherwise, you can rely on handy tools, such as Cleanfox, for automated sorting! This good reflex should free you from some weight.

As for sending mail, limit the number of recipients and the weight of attachments and signatures that burden external servers. The mails do not fly into the wild, but are well hosted in data centres. The latter, a true ecological disaster, require permanent cooling and therefore consume energy.

Eco-gesture # 3: A Social Responsibility

At Wisper, the fact that we operating our virtual machines without any server infrastructure, seek to reduce energy consumption, and offer a fleet recycling solution in partnership with a sister company, has enabled us to register in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach since 2006.

Also, if you choose the Intel Nuc or Asus mini-PC option to equip your employees, be aware that they are significantly less power-consuming than other PCs, and our customers achieve up to 80% energy savings.

Eco-gesture # 4: Using an Eco-Friendly Search Engine to Reduce Digital Pollution

When searching information on the Internet, always use targeted queries according to your needs. Open the tabs of the results that are most relevant to you, one by one, in order to avoid data consumption.

Instead of Google and Bing, look for eco-friendly search engines. Their speciality: to compensate for users’ Internet searches by responsible and ecological actions. Ecosia promises to plant trees; a tree being financed by 45 requests. When you know that a search is equivalent to 7g of CO2, you might as well give the planet a boost!

Also, compare the best offers from energy suppliers to consume more responsibly.

Eco-gesture # 5: Rational Streaming to Reduce Digital Pollution

Watching a video for an hour is equivalent to releasing 130g of CO2 into the atmosphere, or plugging in a refrigerator for a full year! Streaming is believed to be responsible for 60% of data traffic on the web. Series platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime) are in the sights. YouTube too, but not only them – social networks also exacerbate digital pollution.

By disabling automatic video playback and reducing the quality of streams (low definition), you will improve your carbon footprint. Also keep the following reflex: activate Wi-Fi instead of consuming videos via the 4G network, known to be energy-intensive.

With Wisper, the streaming mode of operation is rationed for several reasons: in fact, to avoid the use of continuous bandwidth, we use a cache system which allows reduction in internet access. This local cache system on the ceBox stores the streamed data.

Author: Guest Author