#Carbonhack No.2 – The Cloud
It’s not just deforestation, cars and fossil fuels that are polluting our planet. Tweets, Likes and downloads are all adding to the problem.
It’s easy to think that our digital world is ‘invisible’ and environmentally better by default.
It’s not. Our data is collected, processed, exchanged and stored in enormous data centres all around the world and they need electricity 24/7 to power the servers and prevent them from overheating.
The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data centre can consume the equivalent electricity of for 50,000 homes
Tips to help reduce your carbon footprint:
- Selecting a carbon-thoughtful provider
- Understand a Cloud operator’s corporate commitments towards sustainability, and how they plan, build, power, operate, and retire their data centres.
- Don’t treat the cloud as a limitless storage space where we can dump all our files and forget about them
- Teat the cloud like a filing system which requires regular maintenance, organising, and decluttering
- Reduce the amount of storage you require and reduce your data carbon footprint
