Digital sobriety

Dig­i­tal sobri­ety: From home to per­for­mance

Many every­day actions — such as video con­fer­enc­ing with col­leagues, post­ing a video on Face­book, mak­ing an appoint­ment or watch­ing per­for­mances online — are exam­ples of the use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. These uses are con­stant­ly increas­ing and their envi­ron­men­tal impact is grow­ing in sig­nif­i­cance. This arti­cle sheds light on the envi­ron­men­tal impact of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and offers sev­er­al tips on how you can reduce it, through prac­tices rang­ing from elec­tron­ic equip­ment man­age­ment to the online dis­sem­i­na­tion of per­for­mances.

The glob­al impact of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy

It may be dif­fi­cult, at first glance, to per­ceive the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. We tend to think of it as some­thing abstract, that we can­not touch, that takes place in the cloud. The real­i­ty is quite dif­fer­ent. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy can­not exist with­out the use of equip­ment such as com­put­ers, cell phones, tablets, tele­vi­sions, game con­soles and oth­er relat­ed objects. These devices require the use of oth­er equip­ment need­ed for data stor­age and inter­net con­nec­tion such as routers, modems, 4G and 5G tow­ers and the entire net­work of cables criss­cross­ing the globe. To get an idea of the extent of the under­wa­ter cable net­work, you can have a look at this map.

Pro­duc­ing all this equip­ment has sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal impacts since it requires:

• the extrac­tion of rare met­als that are dif­fi­cult to recy­cle;
• the use and pol­lu­tion of large quan­ti­ties of water; 
• the con­sump­tion of pri­ma­ry ener­gy.

The impact in num­bers

Accord­ing to a study by Green­IT’s Frédéric Bor­dage (2019), our increas­ing con­sump­tion of dig­i­tal devices and data is hav­ing sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant impacts:

It is respon­si­ble for the deple­tion of abi­ot­ic resources, that is, non-renew­able nat­ur­al resources such as min­er­als: it is esti­mat­ed that 22 mil­lion tons are required annu­al­ly for the pro­duc­tion of elec­tron­ic equip­ment.

The fresh­wa­ter con­sump­tion required for the man­u­fac­ture of these devices is about 7.8 mil­lion m3, or 0.2% of annu­al glob­al con­sump­tion.

The amount of pri­ma­ry ener­gy con­sumed by the dig­i­tal sec­tor is 6,800 TWh, which rep­re­sents 4.2% of glob­al pri­ma­ry ener­gy con­sump­tion.

In 2019, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy was respon­si­ble for 3.5% of glob­al green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions, accord­ing to The Shift Project (2021). That’s as much as all inter­na­tion­al civ­il avi­a­tion com­bined and this could dou­ble by 2025, reach­ing 7%!

Thus, every new com­put­er, cell phone or smart­watch pur­chased cre­ates a huge envi­ron­men­tal foot­print, long before it is even used.

In addi­tion, the ever-increas­ing amount of dig­i­tal equip­ment being used and the grow­ing num­ber of users glob­al­ly are result­ing in an explo­sive vol­ume of data usage. This rapid growth has an impact on the envi­ron­ment. The sit­u­a­tion can be described as a vicious cir­cle:

• The increase in dig­i­tal use leads to the renew­al of infra­struc­ture (appear­ance of 5G, new tow­ers, new data stor­age equip­ment, etc.).
• These improve­ments lead to the cre­ation of new prod­ucts (cell phones with new fea­tures, bet­ter qual­i­ty videos, etc.).
• These new prod­ucts then, again, lead to increased usage (increase in the amount of data used, pur­chase of new equip­ment).
• And so on.

It is there­fore nec­es­sary to con­sid­er the prob­lem from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, one of dig­i­tal sobri­ety, in order to reduce usage.

WiFi or cel­lu­lar data?

Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency (IEA), watch­ing a video on a 4G-con­nect­ed cell phone in Cana­da emits three times as much green­house gas as watch­ing it over a WiFi net­work.

Dig­i­tal sobri­ety as an alter­na­tive to over­con­sump­tion

For­tu­nate­ly, dig­i­tal sobri­ety rep­re­sents a solu­tion to dig­i­tal over­con­sump­tion and its harm­ful impacts. This rel­a­tive­ly new con­cept is based on three obser­va­tions:

• Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is phys­i­cal and its impact on the envi­ron­ment is con­crete;
• The ener­gy demands of indus­try are con­stant­ly increas­ing;
• Cur­rent trends lead to the over­con­sump­tion of dig­i­tal equip­ment and data. This over­con­sump­tion is not sus­tain­able.

Good indi­vid­ual prac­tices

As indi­vid­u­als and pro­fes­sion­als in the per­form­ing arts — cul­tur­al work­ers, per­form­ers, chore­o­g­ra­phers, teach­ers, design­ers, musi­cians — our use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is com­mon and nec­es­sary. Dig­i­tal sobri­ety is not about elim­i­nat­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy from our dai­ly lives. Rather, the aim is to use it sen­si­bly with full aware­ness of its impacts. Thus, five actions can be tak­en to move toward dig­i­tal sobri­ety:

1. Extend the life of equip­ment: The bet­ter equip­ment is main­tained, the longer it lasts and the longer the time span over which its envi­ron­men­tal impacts are spread. Always try to have your devices repaired rather than replaced.
2. Share or reuse equip­ment: Anoth­er way to reduce the over­con­sump­tion of equip­ment is to share devices that are not need­ed every day, such as cam­eras, micro­phones, tablets, etc. It is also pos­si­ble to use the same devices at home as at work to avoid dou­bling the num­ber of devices need­ed. When there is a real need for new equip­ment, try to rent it or buy used or refur­bished devices.
3. Lim­it use of the cloud: If you don’t need files (pho­tos, videos, doc­u­ments) to be acces­si­ble at all times, store them local­ly, for exam­ple on a com­put­er, a USB dri­ve or an exter­nal hard dri­ve. This lim­its the amount of data stored in data cen­tres.
4. Reduce video view­ing, espe­cial­ly on cel­lu­lar net­works: Video streams account for 80% of Inter­net traf­fic. As much as pos­si­ble, reduce the num­ber of videos you watch online. To help with this, you can change social net­work set­tings to pre­vent videos from play­ing auto­mat­i­cal­ly when you browse your news­feed. Also, you can avoid lis­ten­ing to music on YouTube and opt for audio files instead. When you do watch videos, watch while con­nect­ed to a WiFi net­work rather than a cel­lu­lar net­work and low­er the image res­o­lu­tion as much as pos­si­ble.
5. Use email judi­cious­ly: Every email is stored in data cen­tres so that it can be accessed on all our devices, at any time. The more numer­ous and the larg­er the emails, the greater their impact. It is there­fore wise to reduce the size of emails by avoid­ing attach­ments and instead includ­ing a link to a web page that already con­tains the doc­u­ment. It is also pos­si­ble to com­press attach­ments before send­ing them. Final­ly, lim­it the num­ber of recip­i­ents when pos­si­ble and delete your emails reg­u­lar­ly to avoid unnec­es­sary accu­mu­la­tion (also remem­ber to emp­ty the trash, junk and sent fold­ers!).

Good prac­tices for record­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing per­for­mances

Keep­ing in mind the prin­ci­ples of dig­i­tal sobri­ety, it is also pos­si­ble to adopt good prac­tices when record­ing or dis­sem­i­nat­ing a per­for­mance online. The idea is to ana­lyze and under­stand the ben­e­fits of such dis­sem­i­na­tion while using dig­i­tal resources sen­si­bly. Thus, it is rec­om­mend­ed to:

• Shoot in HD rather than 4K so that the video requires less stor­age space.
• Com­press videos before trans­mit­ting them to col­leagues or clients.
• Decrease the video’s res­o­lu­tion before it is dis­sem­i­nat­ed (use HD rather than 4K for exam­ple), to reduce the amount of data an audi­ence uses when view­ing it. A very high res­o­lu­tion is often unnec­es­sary when view­ing a video on a com­put­er or cell phone.
• Make the video avail­able for a lim­it­ed time only and then remove it from web­sites after that time. The video can then be stored local­ly for future use.

Dig­i­tal sobri­ety and well­be­ing

Mul­ti­ple ges­tures help reduce the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to the ben­e­fit of our planet’s well­be­ing. Dig­i­tal sobri­ety is all the more inter­est­ing as it also con­tributes to indi­vid­ual well­be­ing by reduc­ing the neg­a­tive effects of hyper­con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The pub­lic health depart­ment (2019) has linked sev­er­al dis­or­ders to hyper­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, includ­ing chron­ic fatigue, impaired con­cen­tra­tion and sleep, and decreased self-esteem. Thus, adopt­ing actions that sup­port the sen­si­ble use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy also helps improve over­all men­tal and phys­i­cal health.

In con­clu­sion, the dig­i­tal sec­tor is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing rapid growth. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is unsus­tain­able in terms of its ener­gy and raw mate­r­i­al require­ments. This growth gen­er­ates envi­ron­men­tal impacts that can only be man­aged if indi­vid­u­als, pro­fes­sion­als and orga­ni­za­tions use dig­i­tal resources more sober­ly and con­scious­ly. Hav­ing real­ized the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem, we must try to do our part to lim­it the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy by com­mit­ting to chang­ing cer­tain habits and to encour­ag­ing dig­i­tal sobri­ety at home and at work. You now have a few ways to help you get there!

By Le Regroupe­ment québé­cois de la danse

Sources:

IEA. (2020). The car­bon foot­print of stream­ing video: fact-check­ing the head­lines. Online: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines

Shift Project. (2021). Impact envi­ron­nemen­tal du numérique: ten­dances à 5 ans et gou­ver­nance de la 5G: https://theshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Note-danalyse_Numerique-et-5G_30-mars-2021.pdf

Green­IT. (2019). Empreinte envi­ron­nemen­tale du numérique mon­di­al: https://www.greenit.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019–10-GREENIT-etude_EENM-rapport-accessible.VF_.pdf

Direc­tion régionale de san­té publique du CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de‑l’Île-de-Montréal. (2019). Les écrans et la san­té de la pop­u­la­tion à Mon­tréal: https://santemontreal.qc.ca/fileadmin/user_upload/Uploads/tx_asssmpublications/pdf/publications/Les_ecrans_et_la_sante_de_la_population_a_Montreal.pdf