Turn off that camera at meaningful meetings, an environmental study says

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – It’s not just about hiding clutter anymore – add “save the planet” to the reasons you leave the camera off during your next virtual meeting.

A new study says that despite the highest reduction in global carbon emissions in 2020, the shift under the influence of pandemic to remote work and increased entertainment at home still has a significant impact on the environment due to how internet data is stored and moved around the world.

Just one hour of video conferencing or streaming, for example, emits 150-1,000 grams of carbon dioxide (gallons of gasoline burned from a car emits around 8,887 grams) , requires 2-12 liters of water and requires a ground cover up to approximately the size of an iPad Mini.

But turning your camera off during a web call can reduce these detections by 96%. Streaming content in standard definition rather than in high definition while using apps like Netflix or Hulu could also provide an 86% reduction, the researchers estimated.

The study, conducted by researchers from Purdue University, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the first to study the water and land traces associated with additional internet infrastructure on carbon footprints. The results are published in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling.

“If you just focus on one type of footprint, you miss out on others that give a more holistic view of environmental impact,” said Roshanak “Roshi” Nateghi, a professor of industrial engineering Purdue, whose job is to find gaps and assumptions. in energy research that led to the disregard for the effects of climate change.

Several countries have reported an increase of at least 20% in internet traffic since March. If the movement continues through the end of 2021, this internet use alone would require a forest of about 71,600 square miles – twice the area of ​​Indiana land – to find the carbon released, the study.

The extra water needed in processing and disseminating data would also be enough to fill more than 300,000 Olympic swimming pools, while providing the resulting ground footprint. equivalent to the size of Los Angeles.

The team estimated the carbon, water and land traces associated with each gigabyte of data used in YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and 12 other platforms, as well. on online games and mixed web surfing. As would be expected, the more video that is used in an application, the greater the footprint.

Because data processing uses a lot of electricity, and any electricity production has traces of carbon, water and land, reducing data downloads reduces environmental damage.

“Banking systems tell you the positive impact of the environment from going paperless, but no – one tells you the benefits of turning off your camera or reducing streaming quality. that without your permission, these platforms increase your environmental footprint, ”said Kaveh Madani, who is directing and directing this study as a visitor at the Yale MacMillan Center.

Internet carbon footprinting had been on the rise ahead of COVID-19 locks, accounting for about 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But internet infrastructure land and water footprints have been largely monitored in studies of how internet use affects the environment, Madani said.

Madani teamed up with research group Nateghi to study these findings and how more internet traffic could affect them, discovering that the footprints are not only changing according to web platform, but also by country. The team collected data for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, UK and USA

Processing and disseminating internet data in the U.S., the researchers found, carbon footprint is 9% higher than the middle of the world, but water and land footprints are 45% and 58% lower, respectively.

The inclusion of water and land traces of internet infrastructure has produced a remarkable picture for a few countries. Even though Germany, the world’s leader in renewable energy, has a much lower carbon footprint than the center of the globe, its water and land footprint is much higher. The landmass of the country’s energy-producing land, for example, is 204% above medieval, according to the researchers.

Purdue graduate students Renee Obringer, Benjamin Rachunok and Debora Maia-Silva performed the calculation and data analysis in collaboration with Maryam Arbabzadeh, a postgraduate research associate at MIT. The estimates are based on publicly available data for each platform and country, models developed by the Madani research group and known values ​​of energy consumption per gigabyte of internet usage based.

The estimates are rough, the researchers say, as they are only as good as the data provided by service providers and third parties. But the team believes the estimates still help document movement and provide a more complete understanding of the environmental footprints associated with internet usage.

“These are the best available data estimates. Despite these reported increases, there is now hope for greater clarity to guide policy,” Nateghi said.

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The study was supported by the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, the Purdue Center for the Environment, the MIT Energy Initiative and the Yale MacMillan Center.

Environmental footprint with neglect of increased internet usage

Renee Obringer1,2, Benjamin Rachunok3 *, Debora Maia-Silva2 *, Maryam

Arbabzadeh4 *, Roshanak Nateghi3, Kaveh Madani5,6

1National Center for Socio-Environmental Synthesis, University of Maryland, 1 Park

Location, Annapolis, MD 21401 USA

2E environmental and ecological engineering, Purdue University, 500 Central Drive, West

Lafayette, IN 47907 USA

3 School of Business Engineering, Purdue University, 315 N. Grant Street, West Lafayette,

IN 47907 USA

4Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative, 307 Ames Street E19,

Cambridge, MA 02142 USA

5Department of Political Science, Yale University, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT

06520 USA

6 Center for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, 16-18 Princes Gardens,

London SW7 1NE, UK

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

DOI: 10.1016 / j.resconrec.2020.105389

The environmental costs of adopting new technologies and practices are often recognized too late, usually when it is difficult to change the technologies and behavioral practices. A similar story could emerge if society continues to move blindly to an unregulated and unencumbered digital world, a path of movement enabled by the fourth industrial revolution and now accelerated by the global COVID-19 crisis. The newly developed digital lifestyle has major environmental benefits, including the reduction of travel-related CO2 emissions. However, more internet use has some hidden environmental effects that need to be discovered (Figure 1a) in order for the transition to a low-carbon and green economy to be successful.