ImagesMagUK_December_2021

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 24 images DECEMBER 2021 What can I do to reduce my digital carbon footprint? W hen it comes to environmental issues we’re swamped with news about plastic pollution, aviation and cutting back on meat and dairy. The latest Netflix series you’re watching, or the email you just cc’d to colleagues is likely not on your radar as something contributing to the climate crisis. This is probably because what happens behind the scenes to make the internet work is rarely physically seen and we’ve coined terms like ‘surfing the web’, ‘the cloud’ and ‘cyberspace’ to manifest it. The wonderful sounding ‘cloud’ is actually an estimated 100 million servers powering the internet. They exist in power-hungry buildings requiring constant air-conditioned temperatures and enormous amounts of energy to run 24/7. Most of this power currently comes from fossil fuels. One of the largest data centres in the world is in Reno. It is a 1.3 million square feet warehouse complex filled with powerful machinery. It’s also actually not unusual in its size, with other data centres around 1 million square feet too. You’ll probably be surprised if I tell you that the annual carbon emissions of our internet activity and infrastructure surpassed that of the aviation industry back in 2018, and it’s growing every day. It’s equivalent to driving all 31 million cars in the UK all the way around the planet. Lots of opportunities You might think it’s a bit strange that I, a person who has built a company that provides websites and hosting to small business owners, am drawing attention to the issue, but I believe we all need to be more aware of how we can influence this growth and apply pressure on the industry to green itself. As we all wake up to our environmental impact as individuals and businesses, it is apparent there are actually lots of opportunities on the horizon to be ahead of coming legislation, supplier reporting and the eventual carbon taxes. One such opportunity is optimising your website by reducing things like image file sizes. Optimising can reduce the power your site is using, the emissions it produces, and increase the speed it loads at. Plus it’s likely to give your SEO rankings a boost as loading speed is one of Google’s ranking factors, which can be a big win for a small business. The other relatively easy action is to switch to a green host, as doing so will dramatically cut the emissions your business is responsible for in this area. Plus there’s a good selection of hosts around using renewable energy or REGO credits to ensure the power being used is from green sources. If you’re not sure if your host is sustainable you can quickly check it by using our Website Eco-Checker (www.create.net/eco-checker ) and if your host isn’t making commitments in this area, it may be time to consider moving provider. Take this approach with other online providers – a supplier making headway in reducing their CO2 cuts down your business’s emissions too. Whether it’s your accounting software, email marketing suite or social sharing tools, it’s worth investigating what they are doing. Email emissions Email is another area where it’s easy for us all to take action. Estimated email emissions vary from 0.3g for a very short email to 50g if you add a big attachment. More if you cc in lots of colleagues. These may be individually small, but as we all send so many we can make a collective difference. If everyone in the UK sent one less email each day we would save over 16,000 tonnes of carbon a year. One of the easiest actions you can take is to delete old, unneeded emails: clear a few each day and empty the deleted items folder regularly. Search your inbox for emails with large attachments you don’t need any more and delete those as a priority. As you’re deleting consider unsubscribing from newsletters that aren’t relevant too. Anything stored in the cloud could be burning fossil fuels and emails are no exception. The same tactics apply to files you store in online services like SharePoint, Google Drive and Dropbox. If clients send logos and images, delete them when you’ve completed their order. It might be a slow burn, but it’s really easy to start deleting emails, documents, photos, graphics and more. When you think about what you really need to keep you’ll end up with a more productive environment to work in and, after all, who doesn’t want to achieve that elusive inbox zero? Expert advice on the business of running a garment decoration company Q&A Rebecca Kimber is the CEO of Create.net, a Brighton-based company that enables small business owners to design their own website. With carbon-neutral hosting, fast to use drag-and-drop website building tools, and no need for code or jargon, it’s been a popular choice with many thousands of businesses since 2001. www.create.net