Turning the camera off at the time of a video call could cut your environmental impact by up to 96 percent.
A new study from Purdue University in the U.S. estimates that an hour of video conferencing or streaming spreads between 150 and 1000 grams of carbon dioxide. It also uses up to 12 liters of water and land area around the size of an iPad mini.
Researchers have found that leaving your camera simply doesn’t mean you can hide your fake home from colleagues – it can help cut down on your carbon footprint, landfill and landfill. water. Streaming videos in standard definition rather than high definition could lead to an 86 percent reduction
This is the first study of its kind to examine how internet infrastructure affects water and land use, not just carbon emissions. It estimated the carbon, water and land associated with each gigabyte of data used across platforms such as YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok or when playing on online and surfing the web.
The conclusion was relatively simple: the more video involved, the higher the footprint.
“Banking systems tell you the positive impact of the environment from being paperless, but no one is telling you the benefit of turning off your camera or reducing streaming quality,” said Kaveh Madani , who led the study.
“So without your permission, these platforms increase your environmental footprint. ”
Processing and sending the data that carries your face across the planet to your boss’s living room takes a lot of electricity. The data centers that process and store this information slowly becoming more efficient but traces of carbon, water or land will always be linked to energy.
A complete look at our internet usage
The researchers found that the estimated carbon emissions, water consumption and land use were changing. Both the web platform you were using and the country in which you are influencing. For example, Germany had much higher water and land margins than others despite being a world leader in renewable energy.
Purdue Professor Roshanak Nateghi will work to find gaps and assumptions in our understanding of energy that may underestimate the impact of climate change. He says that focusing on one type of footprint can lead us to “miss out on others which gives a more holistic view of environmental impact. ”
He also says that these estimates are rough; they are only as good as the data available from internet service providers. However, the team hopes that this information will help to raise awareness of the potential environmental impacts of increased internet use during the pandemic.