Reduce Environmental Impact Online: 6 Easy Ways

The internet is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, however there are negative effects of the internet that not a lot of people actually know about. You might be wondering how can I be eco friendly on the internet or how can I reduce internet emissions in general? I’ll go through some tips on what we can do below.

What Environmental Impact Does The Internet Have

The Environmental Impact From Data Centres

When we think of the strain on our environment we probably don’t think of this having anything to do with the internet and big data centres such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. However, there are a lot of negative effects of the internet on our environment and I’m here to tell you why.

This article states that data centres contribute to 0.3% of the overall global emissions and the Information Communications (ICT, everything related to mobile phones, televisions and networks) as a whole – accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions.

In regards to mobile phones, data centres power everything that you do on your phone from phone calls and messages to uploading photos and videos.

Most of the problem with the big data centres, seems to be the electricity they use for the thousands of servers and the cooling systems they have to run. Anyone who’s run a computer in a small room will know that it can make the room very hot regardless of the weather outside. It doesn’t seem to be talked about much either but a lot of the data centres use fossil fuels to produce the energy and they need to be running constantly to enable us to do everything we want to on our mobile phones and online in general. The negative effects of the internet on our environment are mostly down to this.

What About 5G

As there is a constant demand from consumers for faster internet connections for gaming, streaming and shopping it will only get worse. With the impending 5G network as well, smart devices and autonomous cars in the next 20 years or so there will be more and more devices connected to the internet as standard.

Elon Musk has predicted that fully electric autonomous cars are the future and personally I can’t wait for that innovative invention. However, it does concern me that this might not be enough to bring the global emissions down and reduce the environmental impact online. Especially if we are just replacing the emissions from cars with emissions produced by servers in data centres and causing even more negative effects of the internet.

There are a lot of things that are concerning about 5G in general. I’m not a scientist of course so I am just talking from the view point of an environmentalist and a consumer. There’s not enough evidence to say how 5G will effect our environment, however this article goes into a lot of detail about how 5G is different to 4G. They state that because 5G will allow more devices to be used at the same time, they believe that this will give consumers an incentive to buy more new electrical devices.

This is a very scary thought as in western society overconsumption of everything is very much the norm!

Technology Production

According to this article the greatest energy impact of a device occurs during manufacture. Mobile phone 73% during manufacture (distribution 6% and use 19%) and computer 66% of carbon emissions produced.

It takes 240KG of fuel, 22KG of chemicals and 15,000 litres of water to make a computer. The microchip for a desktop computer takes 160,000 litres of water, 1.6KG of fuel and 0.7KG of chemicals alone – as mentioned in the above article!

To offset your greenhouse gases you’d need to use your device for between 33 – 89 years before getting a new one! When you think that people will generally replace their mobile phone between 10 months – 1 1/2 years after they bought it and a computer we replace 3-5 years after we’ve bought it.

How Can I Be Eco Friendly On The Internet

How Can I Reduce Internet Emissions

Take Internet Breaks

A big way we can help combat the negative effects of the internet is to take internet breaks. This might seem more daunting then ever. Especially because most of the time, everything we do relates to the internet in some way. From social media to Netflix, most of us use the internet for our entertainment and I am no exception to this. I’m usually watching something on Netflix or YouTube in the day even if I’m working at the same time.

We had internet problems about a year ago. This wasn’t a big issue for me to be honest because I had some films and series that I could watch on my computer and I always leave a radio on in the kitchen for when I’m having breakfast, cooking etc so I coped just fine. My partner however, had a mini breakdown because he uses the internet for gaming, music and pretty much everything!

Working from home means that I usually have some form of entertainment such as Netflix on in the background while I work (loving watching Friends through for the millionth time at the moment!). While I’m working on a laptop and maybe checking social media on my phone occasionally as well. If you think about it that’s a lot of energy and devices going at the same time and I don’t really consider myself a technology person.

To reduce my environmental impact online, I personally take a social media break one day a week and on this day I also try not to do anything work related! It is very difficult for me because I’m quite a productive person and there’s always something I can do to improve my blog and YouTube channel. It is the day that I will do something social if I can. If I’m at home I use that day to watch something from my external hard-drive so that I’m avoiding the negative effects of the internet as much as I can.

Any small breaks that you can take would make a difference for example a lot of people avoid their phones a few hours before they go to sleep. It has been said that the blue screens can effect our sleep anyway, hence the red filters that phones and devices have. I have the filter set to come on automatically at 8pm on my phone for this reason.

Unsubscribe From Email Lists

I think we’re all guilty of opening our emails and automatically deleting certain emails that we get. However, if we took the time to unsubscribe from the lists that we’re no longer interested in that would save a lot of energy. It’s obviously a waste of resources for companies and individuals to email people that don’t even read their content.

I recently did a big declutter and unsubscribed from a lot of different companies. It took a while I won’t lie to you but it’s definitely worth it and now if I get a new email that I’m not interested in I unsubscribe immediately.

It will declutter your inbox as well so that’s a big plus. Meaning that you’ll spend less time organising when you check your Inbox.

Switch From Google To Ecosia

In case you haven’t heard of Ecosia they are a revolutionary search engine that uses renewable energy and plants trees for every user. They are an amazing company, they’re carbon neutral and completely transparent about exactly where there money goes.

In fact they even state that they are more than carbon neutral because they use profits to plant trees and product their own solar electricity – they are actively removing CO2 from the air.

I think this is a great way to combat the negative effects from the internet and support an eco friendly company.

You can have a look here and add them to your Chrome extension if you haven’t already.

It is difficult to change habits like this I will admit, I automatically go to Google things all the time and forget to use Ecosia. However I just keep training myself to use it and sometime in the future it will be second nature.

How Can I Be Eco Friendly With Tech Items

Buy Second-Hand Technological Items

I find this one really easy because I already buy second-hand clothes. When you buy second-hand phones, devices etc you are taking a risk I understand that. That-being-said you just need to read the information fully and avoid buying things from individual sellers on Facebook marketplace because you have no way of knowing if they’re telling the truth or not. I usually look for items on Ebay or Amazon second-hand because then if there are any major issues you can ask Ebay or Amazon to step in.

Buy Refurbished Tech

A slightly less risky way of avoiding new technology is to buy refurbished items instead. These are usually refurbished by a seller or shop and they have different grades. Generally speaking you can expect to pay a bit more for A and B grade items.

A: This is the best quality grade of the grading system and usually comes in almost mint condition. If you buy an item with this grade it shouldn’t show any signs of wear. There might be slight fading of keys but no scratches or scuffs.

B: With the next best grade, you should expect full working order. However, there might be some scratches or other signs of wear. My previous mobile phone that I bought was Grade B and it did have a scratch in the corner of the screen which wasn’t noticeable really.

C: The cheapest of the grades is the C. You can expect an item which has quite noticeable signs of wear or heavy use but they should still work very well and have life left in them. Great option if you really don’t have the money to spend a lot on a purchase at this time.

The mobile phone I’m using at the moment was bought to replace my previously refurbished phone which I bought. I think the old phone did last approximately 2 years before it started to have any real issues with it’s battery and system. I knew that I wanted to buy another refurbished phone as I don’t like to waste money and I’m aware of the environmental impact of new items.

My latest phone which I bought in April 2020 when I set up my blog. Was a Motorola E6 Play 32GB for £64.79 which was also a Grade B+ phone. I’m guessing there were some minor scratches or something on it but honestly I can’t find anything on it right now and it works perfectly.

I think with so many technological items such as phones and laptops already in circulation buying second-hand and refurbished wherever you can is the best option. The bonus is that you also save money from doing this.

I’ve never been one of those people that needs the latest phone either. I will literally use a phone or computer until it breaks down and I can no longer use it. It’s usually family members that suggest I replace something because it’s slow and I say “Nah, it’s fine.”

Recycle Or Sell Old Phones And Computers

This surprised me but apparently a lot of people will just throw old devices away rather than recycle or sell. The trouble with this is batteries in devices can leak acid and pollute our environment.

Once you’ve taken all of your personal information off of the mobile, tablet or computer and you no longer need it you can recycle or sell it in a few ways.

Sell Your Old Devices

If you’ve just upgraded a phone or device but it is in full working order you can sell it to a store like Cashconverters for a bit of money. That way the store deals with the selling of the device when it still has plenty of life left in it.

You can also sell it on Ebay or Amazon if it still works. Even if it doesn’t work, really old phones are collectables. I’ve also noticed people selling devices as spare parts on Ebay or Amazon if they’re faulty so that’s another option too.

Some companies accept mobile phones even ones that don’t work and they’ll pay you for them. They usually send a postage paid envelope which you just put the old phone into and send it off. Then they pay you a small amount for the phone.

Recycle Old Devices

If you really don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling you can donate an old phone to charity shops. Charity shops can sell them to recycling centres themselves to raise money.

Alternatively you can take small electrical devices to your local recycling centre. We recently had to take my old desktop computer to our recycling centre. I probably could have sold it as spare parts but it was about 10 years old so I didn’t think any of the parts would be much good to anyone.

Unplug Chargers

If you leave chargers plugged in, it does use a small amount of electricity regardless of if anything is still plugged into it. It’s a good practise to unplug your phone or tablet once it’s charged and unplug the charger also.

Apparently it’s not a massive amount of energy that you save, however I do try and switch off all plugs that I’m not using and unplug chargers when I’m not using them. I want to reduce my environmental impact as much as possible so I do this instinctively now.

I know it can be difficult when your family are charging various things around the house. It’s hard to get everyone to remember to do it.

Some people have used those electricity testers to establish how much energy is lost from chargers and it doesn’t seem to be a lot. You might only save pence/cents a year from doing this but in my mind it’s not about the money it’s about being mindful and not wasting energy.

That-being-said this is such a small thing that if you were struggling to remember just don’t worry about it. The previous tips are much more beneficial for reducing your overall carbon footprint and helping the environmental impact of technology in general.

Summary

I hope this article has answered the question, what environmental impact does the internet have and How can I be eco friendly on the internet.

These tips should help you reduce your environmental impact online and the carbon footprint of electronic devices in general. Let me know in the comments if you have any tips to add.

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