Now indispensable to everyday life, no one can imagine stopping using digital technology. Yet, although its environmental footprint is less obvious than that of factories or vehicles, it is no less present and a contributor to global warming. Today, this sector accounts for 4% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. This figure is likely to double by 2025. For France, the figure is 2%, but could rise to 7% by 2040 if no changes are made. What's more, around 10% of the world's electricity consumption is used by the digital sector. These figures are already significant, but they are growing exponentially, as the digital sector continues to expand both in terms of use and performance! So how do we explain this digital pollution, and how can we reduce it, thanks in particular to audio? We explain!
The digital sector has a major impact on the environment.
But why is this sector so polluting?
Well, there are many reasons for this. The first and most important pollution factor is the manufacture of our various digital terminals (laptops, computers, televisions, tablets...). Dozens of materials from all over the world are used in the design of these objects, including various metals: silver, tantalum, lithium, gold... rare earths and ores. Extracting them requires enormous amounts of fossil fuels, water and other resources.
In addition to their extremely polluting (and ethically disastrous) extraction, these various elements are sent all over the world, to be processed and incorporated into the devices during the various assembly phases. Before even being switched on for the first time, its various components have travelled 150,000 km, or 4 times around the earth!
Take the case of a smartphone: around 85% of its greenhouse gas emissions come from its manufacture, which requires the extraction of 82kg of raw materials for an object weighing just... 200 grams!
Pollution caused by the operation of the Internet network.
This network functions thanks to a multitude of cables and data storage equipment (servers, computers, antennas...). The storage and transmission of this data in data centers also generates a great deal of pollution. By way of comparison, a 10,000m2 data center consumes as much electricity as a city of 50,000 inhabitants.
E-mails, for example, are a major source of energy consumption. Today, around 12 billion e-mails are sent every hour worldwide, producing enough electricity to power 18 nuclear power plants for one hour! What's more, a typical e-mail emits around 4 grams of CO2. The 280 billion e-mails sent each year therefore emit 410 million tonnes of CO2!
Audio vs. video: which is greener?
Video streaming accounts for 80% of Internet data flows, according to a study by The Shift Project. This alone accounts for 1% of global CO2 emissions, or as much greenhouse gas production as Spain! And given the never-ending growth in video traffic, this figure is set to rise sharply in the future.
In total, video streaming on the various platforms: YouTube, Netflix, Twitter... but also pornographic sites, generates more than 300 million tons of CO2 per year!
We were talking earlier about e-mails, which are harmful to the environment. A high-definition film on a streaming platform weighs 10 gigabytes, which is 300,000 times heavier than an e-mail (30kb)! Also according to "The shift project", 10h of high-definition film contains more data than the whole of Wikipedia's English-language articles!
Audio is much more environmentally friendly than video. In fact, an audio file consumes 1,000 times less bandwidth than a video of the same length. Simply put, bandwidth is the volume of Internet data transferred per unit of time. We can therefore conclude that audio is far less energy-consuming and polluting than video streaming.
How can you replace video consumption with audio consumption?
On YouTube, the #1 use is listening to music. But to listen to music, video is absolutely not essential. And given that video streaming is one of the main sources of pollution on the web, it should be possible to listen to music while switching off the screen. For the time being, this is only possible for subscribers to the Youtube Prime service, which has to be paid for. If this feature were available to everyone, it would reduce the platform's CO2 consumption by 500,000 tons!
In the case of confinement, we have seen a consistent growth in telecommuting. One might think that, given the reduction in commuting distances, telecommuting would be the miracle solution for reducing one's impact on the environment. As a reminder, the transport sector accounts for 31% of greenhouse gas emissions in France. But it's not that simple. In fact, telecommuting increases domestic energy consumption by 10% through the sending of e-mails and heavy files, the use of videoconferencing platforms... Because telecommuting inevitably means remote meetings, and therefore the use of video platforms! And as we saw earlier, these are harmful to the environment.
The greenspector website recently published a ranking of videoconferencing platforms, from the most to the least harmful to the environment. Adding up carbon impact, energy consumption and data consumption, the three most environmentally-friendly applications are : Google meet, microsoft teams and Tixeo. Using these applications can already be an interesting way of reducing your environmental footprint. But to be even more environmentally friendly, the Greenspector website advises you to hold your meetings using only the audio functionality of these platforms. In fact, 1 minute of audio + camera videoconferencing emits 0.403 grams of CO2 (equivalent to 3.6 meters in a car) and consumes 16.26 Ah, whereas 1 minute of audio-only videoconferencing emits 0.155 g of CO2 (equivalent to 1.38 meters in a car) and consumes 9.84 mAh. Adding video to audio, a session is therefore 2.6 times more impactful on the environment.
Finally, downloading your audio files when you plan to listen to them several times is also a good thing to do. Indeed, listening to music online is much more energy-consuming than listening to it offline. If you really like a track, don't forget to download it!
The digital sector may not seem so bad for the environment. In fact, when we surf the web or send an e-mail, we don't feel as though we're acting directly on eco-systems, as a car or a factory would. But this sector, and everything that makes it possible, is actually very harmful! Streaming video is the most energy-intensive use, whereas audio alternatives often exist! So think again next time!
