Reducing your digital footprint
What is a digital footprint?
Did you know that running all of the servers in the world produces about the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the entire aviation industry? These days we are all using and storing massive amounts of data in the form of email, documents, images, games, music, apps, clips and movies. We don’t often think about the environmental impact of our ‘digital footprint’ but it is growing rapidly! And it costs our organisations time, money and energy to store and back up all this stuff.
Check out this pithy little clip ‘how green is your internet‘ from an episode of Hungry Beast for a concise explanation.
By now you will be wondering… what can I do about this?
How to reduce your digital footprint!
Take the pledge to reduce your digital footprint.
I’m not an expert in this field. I could find no easy guide to this so I’ve made this one up, and recently updated it based on feedback from the kind commentators below. Your feedback is welcome.
Think about the impact and use of different types of data
- Notice the size of different types of files
- Moving images and multimedia files take up lots of room – movies, music, games etc.
- Still images take up a bit.
- Emails without attachments, text documents, and other kinds of text take up much less room.
- Notice the different ways that data is used and stored
- Data sitting in long-term storage on cloud servers and not being actively used, e.g. email accounts you no longer use.
- Data sitting in long-term storage on cloud servers that is being actively used. eg: your current gmail account, your Flickr photos that you make regular uploads to, the DropBox that you use.
- Data that’s travelling through servers but doesn’t stay there. eg: Mailing pictures to people, watching a video from iView, etc.
- Data that’s sitting on your own personal computer or work computer. This is your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and your programs/applications (MS Word, Firefox, etc.) and your personal files (your email, movies, documents, etc.)
Avoid unnecessary digital storage in the first place
•send shared drive links at work instead of attaching documents to emails
•if you want access to a file in more than one place, create a shortcut rather than making a copy of the file
•don’t use and store large attachments if you don’t need to
•get in the habit of regularly deleting large emails (like those with images and other files attached) that you don’t need from your inbox and sent box – you can do this faster by sorting them by size or using mailbox clean up tools
•zip big files
•save large files that only need to be read-only as PDFs
Do a little stocktake of the bigger and/or less useful contributors to your digital footprint – think about things like:
•Work PC and Mailbox
•Home PC and Mailbox
•Facebook account and other similar like MySpace
•Blogs and online journals that you keep
•Online storage like Dropbox
•Webmail like Yahoo, Gmail, hotmail etc
•Online photo and video storage like Snapfish and flickr
Now work out what categories your own different kinds of data fall into and what you want to do about them
- Work out how many of these fall into Type 1 – i.e. accounts you actually don’t use any more or access infrequently. If you don’t need it, delete it. If you want to access it occasionally, you can move it to your local computer, unless that means you need to buy more storage or a new computer in order to do so, in which case it’s probably more efficient to leave online. You can archive large email folders that you aren’t using actively but need to look at occasionally – you can create an email account in your computer’s own email account and synch it with your online email to back up your old email, then delete what you don’t access regularly from cyberspace. Here are some tips on archiving: Using Outlook / PC: http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/et_archive_mail.htm; Using a Mac: http://guides.macrumors.com/Archiving_E-Mail; http://blogmines.com/blog/2011/10/03/how-to-configure-yahoo-mail-on-mac-os-x-lion/
- Work out what’s Type 2 – accounts that you actively use and store online. See if there are chunks of this that you don’t use, like old folders and albums, that you can delete or archive as above.
- For Type 4 – if your hard drive seems to be getting full, delete files from your computer that you don’t need, such as once-off downloads that are no longer needed, games you no longer play, music you no longer want, films you’re not going to watch again, audiobooks you’ve already listened to… Go and google to find ways to save space on your particular operating system. Start with phrases like “save space on a mac computer”, “save space with windows vista”, etc. Find five or so articles that look sensible and have been written within the last year or so (things change fast with computers!) and follow what seems applicable to your situation. Some relevant programs include WhatSize for mac (http://whatsizemac.com/) or TreeSize for windows (http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/). Some particular tips for email: If you use Outlook, use the Mailbox clean up tool. If you use Lotus Notes (yes, it’s true, some people do) I’m sure there’s a similar function and one I really like where you can get a prompt to save – or not – your sent items as you send them. In both Outlook and Lotus Notes you can delete attachments and retain the email if you need to. What you want to avoid is buying new drives just for storage.
Lobby your favourite computer manufacturer, internet provider, search engine or social media giant to green their energy supply
- If you’ve watched the Hungry Beast clip you’ll see that some companies are bowing to pressure to install renewable energy to power their servers or buy green energy.
- Since then more have followed, e.g. http://www.macrumors.com/2012/05/17/apples-data-centers-to-be-powered-by-100-renewable-energy/
- Here’s a review of different companies by Green Peace - why not get in touch with them and let them know your thoughts on this issue?
Got other ideas on how to reduce your digital footprint? Comment here!
1. Stop global warming by unsubscribing to this blog! | Infotropism | 19 July, 2012 at 3:34 pm
[...] a load of complete codswallop this is. I’m rather fond of our local Transition group, and the Transition Towns movement overall, [...]
2.
missymojay | 19 July, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Hi Skud,
Thanks for your interest in this topic.
It’s true. I’m not an expert in this field. And when I looked to find any easy guides to reducing digital footprint, I couldn’t find any that were actually focussed on energy use as opposed to privacy or security.
So I created my own. Perhaps I should have added a disclaimer to that effect. I did on my facebook page, which is what that pledge links to.
I have now.
The fact that I’m not an expert however, doesn’t necessarily mean that this is ‘codswallop’.
I couldn’t agree more with your excellent suggestions for systemic ways of reducing our digital footprint. In fact a later version of my guide includes a section on checking out which internet-based companies are doing what in terms of their energy use, and encouraging people to lobby these companies to do better.
I’m on holidays right now so I can’t access that document, but I’ll post it in a couple of weeks when I back – ironically enough, I didn’t save it in my dropbox or email it to myself!
To respond to a couple of your particular points:
• do they really think that Google, for instance, stores a separate copy of each blog post for each of the thousands of people who subscribe through their Reader product
• No, I don’t. RSS was probably a bad example. What I meant was that people sign up for a lot of different kinds of notifications that come to their inbox and which they often then just ignore or delete – yes each one would be miniscule, but when you think of the millions and millions of instances of this, it’s a lot. If they’re actually useful, and you delete them afer you’ve read them, knock yourself out. If you don’t actually read them, why not unsubscribe? If you do, just delete them when you’re done.
• Or that archiving email on your own computer is more energy efficient than leaving it in a purpose-built data centre?)
• What I’m talking about here is archiving email that is just purely ‘one day I may like to read that again’ stuff – not stuff I access regularly. I’m a hoarder and I have gigabytes of that stuff. And yes, if it’s on my own computer and not taking up any server space, then my assumption is that it’s not using any extra energy that wouldn’t be being used anyway. As you point out, just how efficient are most data centres? But more to the point, how much of what they store is really worth keeping? Of course some of it is. But I certainly know I have kept a lot of utterly useless junk over my time, and with the exponentially growing use and storage of films, music, photos etc etc, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone…
And to respond to your substantive point:
the whole idea reeks of the kind of “austerity measures” that most strongly impact individuals while corporations aren’t held to any kind of standards of all
I agree corporations and organisations absolutely need to be held to account. It was an omission on my part as I mentioned above that that angle was not covered in this point.
However I don’t believe that absolves us of individual responsibility. Why do Dropbox and You Send It send us offers of unlimited storage? Why do Google and co create more data centres?
Because we all treat digital storage as if it is magic, requires no energy to support, and has no consequences.
I believe that the crises facing us will take individual, community and societal action to solve. I don’t think individuals acting on their own will be enough. Nor do I think governments and corporations will act in the absence of individuals and communities taking action and demanding action.
And for me taking no individual action doesn’t feel right or empowering. I know that my own car is not going to make or break the fight for a safe climate, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to ride my bike and take public transport and avoid the car as much as possible. I think individual ‘austerity’ is probably a smart move for our own resilience in the context of an energy-constrained world, and I think it constributes to community ‘austerity’. How can I credibly ask governments, communities and corporations to take action or make changes if I’m not prepared to do it myself and am in fact adding to the huge appetite for resources, energy etc?
So yeah, I’m going to continue to take action individually, as well as in community groups and also through advocay, lobbying, working through government etc.
Not everyone is interested in playing in every arena, so I think it’s important to empower people to contribute in the ways that call to them. Sometimes one leads to another, sometimes it doesn’t.
The point of this particular post was really to get people thinking about how much energy digital storage does take, and to think about how unnecessary much of it is.
Sally
3.
Jim Buckell | 19 July, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Excellent initiative Sal.
You raise many digital and cyberspace energy issues I’d never thought about … and you’ve kicked off an informative debate with Skud.
I agree with you, we need to walk the talk in our own lives. It’s a bottom up approach. We can’t rely on governments or business alone to do it. Their record shows they are tardy, inefficient and encumbered by long histories of bad habits … and captured all too often by vested interests.
It’s empowering to act for ourselves. Seizing the initiative in our households encourages us to think creatively about a sustainable future. In turn this informs our experience to work collaboratively on a broader scale in our communities and the wider world – including government and business. Very much the Transition Movement model as I understand it.
Keep up the great work!
Jim
4.
missymojay | 20 July, 2012 at 10:33 am
FYI folks have now posted the missing part of this guide at the bottom thanks to my helpful colleague for sending it to me!
5.
missymojay | 20 July, 2012 at 10:49 am
And see Skud’s thoughtful and informative reply: http://infotrope.net/2012/07/19/stop-global-warming-by-unsubscribing/#comment-11026
6.
Ricky Buchanan | 20 July, 2012 at 2:29 pm
There are four types of data you have mixed together in this post. I’m going to try to separate these because they all have different issues and different ways of dealing with them:
TYPE 1: Data sitting in long-term storage on cloud servers and not being actively used. eg: Your old MySpace and LiveJournal accounts, your unused HotMail email from when you used to use it.
There are two basic things you can do with this type of data: You can delete it, or you can move it to your local computer. If you move it to your local computer it becomes type 4 and you should move to that point.
TYPE 2: Data sitting in long-term storage on cloud servers that is being actively used. eg: your current gmail account, your Flickr photos that you make regular uploads to, the DropBox that you use.
Assuming that deleting these accounts isn’t practical, you can do two things:
- Delete those parts of the data which you don’t really need any more: the old gmail attachments, the old flickr photos, the dropbox files you haven’t accessed in a year, etc. If you google, you can find specific instructions for saving space on most accounts, eg try “save space in gmail account”.
- Move some parts of the data to your local computer – the bits which you need but don’t need online. This makes it type 4 data, so go read that point.
TYPE 3: Data that’s travelling through servers but doesn’t stay there. eg: Mailing pictures to people, watching a video from iView, etc.
This type of data is NOT in long term storage, it’s just passing through. Somebody else might choose to save it, such as the email recipient but basically it’s not your problem.
What can you do about it? Educate other people about not saving huge amounts of unnecessary data.
4. Data that’s sitting on your own personal computer. This is your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and your programs/applications (MS Word, Firefox, etc.) and your personal files (your email, movies, documents, etc.)
Having more local files does not use energy just by itself. If your 250gb hard drive has 50gb files on it or 200gb of files on it does not significantly change how much electricity your computer uses.
BUT if you have so many files locally that you’re thinking of buying another hard drive, or upgrading the hard drive you have, or buying a new computer with a larger drive, etc., then the embodied energy in that new drive or new computer is HUGE compared to the savings you are making by not storing data online.
[NB: Embodied energy is the amount of energy used in manufacturing and transporting and disposing of that drive]
So if your hard drive seems to be getting full, go and google to find ways to save space on your particular operating system. Start with phrases like “save space on a mac computer”, “save space with windows vista”, etc. Find five or so articles that look sensible and have been written within the last year or so (things change fast with computers!) and follow what seems applicable to your situation.
Everybody is different so it’s pretty much impossible to give hard-and-fast advice but one thing I highly recommend is to find a program similar to WhatSize for mac (http://whatsizemac.com/) or TreeSize for windows (http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/) and check to see what parts of your personal data files are taking up the most space. You might be surprised!
Now’s the slightly tricky bit: If you have slimmed down your data via all these methods and you still have too much data to store on the hard drives you already own, I recommend uploading some of it to cloud storage. Yes, this is the opposite advice to what I said at the top of the article! This advice *only* applies if your choice is to use cloud storage OR to buy a new hard drive.
If you can use hard drives you already own and use less cloud storage, that’s the optimal situation. But if you just have too much data to make that practical, then it’s more energy-efficient to use more cloud storage than to buy a new hard drive.
I hope this makes sense!! Feel free to use any/all of it in your article.
Cheers,
Ricky
7.
bigiain | 20 July, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Skud is right. Concerning yourself with minimising stored emails or blog posts or tweets or any text documents is completely misguided. It’s ignoring the many orders of magnitude difference between different formats of your “digital footprint”. The ~30,000 emails I’ve got stored on this machine take up under 30Meg of disk space, for an average of 9.4k per email (that’s text only, including headers and filesystem overhead but not including attachements). That’s all the email I’ve received since Dec ’07 that wasn’t auto deleted as spam or manually deleted (which is uncommon for me). 4 and a half years and over 30,000 individual emails. All take up less space than the last 10 pictures my phone camera took. The last import from my iPhone was 10 pictures and 32.4Meg. I’ve got ~7,800 pictures in my iPhoto library, taking up ~12Gig of space. Thats about 400times as much space as all my email. My iTunes library has ~15,000 songs in it, using 133Gig that’s 4,000 times as much space as ~5years worth of email. A single tv show download is 4 or 5 hundred meg, a single dvd rip an be 5 or 10 Gig. I have friends who have multiple terabyte harddrives full of downloaded tv/movies. Tens of thousands of times as much storage as my 30,000 emails.
In terms of “reducing your digital footprint”, worrying about the text stored as email/blogposts/tweets/social media updates/etc, is like advising people to put caps over the end of their straws to reduce evaporation as a means of conserving water. It’s “reducing” such an insignificant proportion of the problem that it’s (rightfully) considered farcical.
Understand the relative sizes of different bits of the problem. Text is _tiny_. Back in the day, that standard way of explaining “a megabyte” was “about a Robert Ludlam novel”. That’s about a years worth of writing time for a professional writer, or maybe ten hours worth of reading. A megabyte is also about 1 minute of typical mp3 audio, or 6 seconds of YouTube video, or less than a second of HD video, or as little as 0.2seconds of BluRay ripped video.
Worrying about email/blogposts/twitter/socialmedia is so misguided, it’s hard not to just make fun of you. There are _so_ many better things you could do to “save the planet” in the time you’d waste if you “get in the habit of spending 10 minutes at the end of each day deleting email you don’t need”. Seriously, it won’t help, and to anybody who knows that it just makes your advice look crazy.
Iain
8.
missymojay | 21 July, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Thanks guys, this is all really useful stuff. I take your point Iain about effort vs impact – when I talk about deleting emails – personally, I do actually spend 10 minutes a day when i’m at work deleting useless emails, mostly just because it bugs me to have this growing trashpile sitting in my sent items, however I agree, it’s small beer. But obviously that depends on what kind of emails you’re deleting – if they have photos and other kinds of files attached then they’re not such small beer. And I think people often don’t even notice that. But yep in terms of bang for effort, it makes much more sense to use mailbox clean up or other tools like that where you can target big emails. For me the daily clean up is just a way to not get the backlog building up. I shall edit my guide to make it obvious what things are higher priorities than others. Thanks for your feedback!
9.
missymojay | 22 July, 2012 at 7:36 pm
fyi now updated… further feedback welcome
10. Martin Pluss - DFRAC Resources | 11 January, 2013 at 12:10 am
[...] http://transitiondarebin.org/digital-footprint/ [...]
11.
missymojay | 16 June, 2013 at 2:25 pm
A recent blog on improvements in data storage…
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/tech-strategy/055438-hosted-service-prices-are-about-to-take-a-big-dive.html