Bold claim, right?
Surely a digital business is helping the climate crisis, not contributing toward it. After all, we’ve gone paperless so no more trees cut down; we recycle everything we can; and we don’t travel to meetings to reduce fuel consumption.
And while the ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ mantra is a good one and all those activities in your business that abide by it are worthwhile and helping somewhat, there’s a potential issue you haven’t even thought about.
Your business data and it’s storage.
There is an environmental impact to how your business data is stored
Your business data is anything you store on a cloud based server – your emails, your website, anything in DropBox, Google or OneDrive, etc. While we cannot physically see the data on the cloud like we might see files in a filing cabinet, it functions much in the same way. Whatever is stored on the cloud still needs physical infrastructure to store it, and because it’s digital, energy to power it too.
According to Greenpeace, 20% of the world’s total electricity consumed will be from the technology sector. And at the end of 2017, only 20% of the electricity used by the world’s data centres, i.e. where your business data is stored, was from renewable sources.
It’s quite concerning that although this information was published in 2017, many of us are completely unaware of how cloud computing can actually be damaging our climate and planet in much the same way as the paper-based way of working, despite it being hailed as the greener way of the future.
Data storage can literally raise the temperature
If you’ve ever been in a room full of computers, you’ll be aware of just how much heat computer equipment can generate. Data servers are often room sized themselves, so you can imagine how the heat they generate can be vast but also need to be kept cool, a process which itself requires further energy.
Cooling can account for 40% of the energy consumption of these data centres, and even as much as 80% if the centre is located in a warm location itself. One solution has been to move data centres to colder climates, such as the Arctic Circle Data Centre in Norway which is powered by hydroelectricity and wind farms.
However, for those of us in the UK and EU there’s a problem. GDPR means we need to be storing our data within the EU/UK for data security.
So, what can you do as a small business owner?
Clearly, as a small business owner what you store on the cloud is miniscule compared with large corporations but just as us recycling our plastic only makes a minor dent in the huge amount of plastic in the ocean; there are things we can do.
Be on top of your data
Only keep what you really need to for your business to function and to abide by GDPR regulations. Does the data need to be kept on the cloud or can you save it on an external hard drive? Does that hard drive need to be plugged in all the time?
For anything that does need to be accessible on the cloud, consider using zip files to reduce the storage space used.
Keep your email inbox clear
Each email takes up storage space. Perhaps you’ve sent or received files in your email, then you’ve downloaded to your computer to work on them, and you’ve uploaded to cloud storage for later. That’s three versions of the same file using storage space.
Try to encourage file transfer via DropBox, OneDrive or Google rather than sharing via email. It’s often much safer from a security point of view, but it also reduces storage space too.
Delete old and duplicate emails. Download them into a zip file and save them offline if you think you may need to access them in the future.
Check the green credentials of your suppliers
One area you do have control over things is your webhosting. There are several carbon neutral hosting companies in the UK (Zebra Web Hosting included) that offset their carbon emissions through tree planting, using renewable sources of energy and other measures.
Just as we turn lights off and shut the door as we leave rooms, it’s important to take the small measures we can to reduce energy use digitally too. Just by deleting files, keeping your inbox clear and sharing files wisely, you can be helping to reduce the space needed to store your data and contribute to a reduction in energy use and heat generation.
Even as small business owners and freelancers, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to do what we can to solve the climate crisis and look after our planet.
