The Life of Things – My digital loft

4 min read

If we had reams of paper, piles of newspaper clips, heaps of family photos, shots of every sunset we had seen, and every meal we had eaten, shelves full of videos, boxes and boxes of games building up on every surface of our house, we would be one of those people we read stories about. The people who, when they die and are discovered days, weeks later, the police can't get in the front door because it’s blocked by the piles of stuff they have been hoarding for years.

This is the reality of our digital lives. We produce and store so much stuff. I am doing it now, even as I write this article. And that’s kind of ok, except because it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind, building up in data storage centers which are nothing like clouds – they are vast physical buildings using colossal amounts of energy.

Frankly I don't understand the numbers, there are so many different statistics flying around, and they are all super confusing, and often contradictory. But I do understand the principle – transferring and storing data (which happens every time we send an email, take and store a photo, browse the internet, attend a video conference) uses energy and that, more often than not, means burning fossil fuels. Because currently only 28% of the world's energy consumption is from renewables. When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. These gases trap heat in our atmosphere and are causing our climate crisis.

Yes the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are all committing to 100% use of renewable energy. By 2050 Microsoft has even committed to removing from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted both directly and indirectly through it’s supply chain and by the users of it’s platforms since it was founded in 1975. Which is a huge commitment. But the fact remains that currently only about 20% of the electricity used in the world’s data centres is renewable, with 80% of the power still coming from fossil fuels.

There are lots of trade offs of course, a video conference uses far less energy than flying to another country for a face to face meeting and there are those who think we have bigger things to worry about than our digital footprint. But at current estimates the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, which is the same amount of energy as the aviation industry globally, pre Covid.

There is a very informative article, from the BBC which is worth a read if you are interested in understanding energy use. I will put a load of useful links at the bottom of this article. Just make sure you close those tabs after you have read the article because that’s one of the problems. How many tabs do you have open right now?

As consumers we have power and responsibility, power to influence brands and their behaviour, through our consumption and the responsibility to change our behaviour - and it might make us feel better too. These are some of the things we can and should be doing...

Bin it
Those screenshots, those multiple photos of the same things, those files and emails, (more on that later) and those websites. There are about 2 billion websites on the internet, and thousands more are being created every day. Yet only 15% of those are actually active, about 400 million. Which is staggering. 1.8 million new pages are published every 24 hours. But the reality is very few of them will ever be seen. In a study conducted on 2 million randomly selected pages 94.3% never got a single visitor. Now that study was done by a company specialising in SEO, so their answer is improve SEO. I would say if you have a web page which is not being visited you have to seriously consider hitting delete. Your website should not be a record of everything that has happened to your business since its inception. Being very generous, the average time spent on a web page is 90 seconds - the most they can read in that time is 400 words. If they concentrate.

Build it
How we design and build a site in the first place makes a big difference to energy consumption. We have just designed our first low impact site withoutform.space. Low Tech Magazine is another great example, which it should be coz it’s all about green energy. The site runs on a solar-powered server located in Barcelona. As the servers run out of energy the page background colour transitions from cream to white. When the weather is bad for a long time, the site goes offline. At the moment this low impact approach is at the fringes of web design, but commercial brands are starting to follow these principles. Organic Basics is a sustainable apparel company based in Copenhagen. They launched a low-impact version of their website that reduces data transfer by up to 70% compared to their regular website. Although inspired, like us by Low Tech, the decision was actually prompted by a customer who asked about their carbon footprint.

No thank you
At the time of writing this I had 83,694 emails, I have just done a very satisfying purge and got that down to 15,000. Still probably more than I need but it’s a start. In the case of email however size does matter. It’s the attachments that we send which create the weight rather than the number. And we have to stop sending two word emails!

Britons send over 64 million superfluous emails every day, according to a study by Ovo Energy. The study found that if every person in the U.K. sent one fewer email a day, carbon output would drop by 16,433 tons per year. In the scheme of things that's a relatively small change, but it represents a change in behaviour and consciousness about our actions and their impact. So you won't be getting any more thank you emails from me.

Our legacy lives on
In 2018 a YouGov survey found that there are 4.9bn dead users on Facebook alone. It is of course something which we are reluctant to think about, what happens to all that data after our death. The answer is it just stays there. Unless you have given someone your passwords to enable them to delete your accounts and the data they hold. It will always be there.

Facebook 'memorialises’ accounts enabling you to add a legacy contact – someone who can make decisions about your content after you pass away. But remember Facebook makes it difficult to delete your account, keeping everything even if you have deactivated it. It is disturbing that Facebook (or should I say Meta), who has not shown itself to be honest, transparent, or ethical can use our data for profit - even after we are dead. But I digress…

I could keep going, but practicing what I preach I will end here. Below are the links I mentioned.

30 women and non binary artists explore climate change

Microsoft explains how they calculate energy

Principles of a low impact site

Calculate the weight of your site (page by page)

Stop sending those three word emails (Chrome only)

Resources and tools for a greener web

The book to read if you are interested in digital minimalism

Frances Jackson
Founder OPX

4 min read

If we had reams of paper, piles of newspaper clips, heaps of family photos, shots of every sunset we had seen, and every meal we had eaten, shelves full of videos, boxes and boxes of games building up on every surface of our house, we would be one of those people we read stories about. The people who, when they die and are discovered days, weeks later, the police can't get in the front door because it’s blocked by the piles of stuff they have been hoarding for years.

This is the reality of our digital lives. We produce and store so much stuff. I am doing it now, even as I write this article. And that’s kind of ok, except because it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind, building up in data storage centers which are nothing like clouds – they are vast physical buildings using colossal amounts of energy.

Frankly I don't understand the numbers, there are so many different statistics flying around, and they are all super confusing, and often contradictory. But I do understand the principle – transferring and storing data (which happens every time we send an email, take and store a photo, browse the internet, attend a video conference) uses energy and that, more often than not, means burning fossil fuels. Because currently only 28% of the world's energy consumption is from renewables. When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. These gases trap heat in our atmosphere and are causing our climate crisis.

Yes the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are all committing to 100% use of renewable energy. By 2050 Microsoft has even committed to removing from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted both directly and indirectly through it’s supply chain and by the users of it’s platforms since it was founded in 1975. Which is a huge commitment. But the fact remains that currently only about 20% of the electricity used in the world’s data centres is renewable, with 80% of the power still coming from fossil fuels.

There are lots of trade offs of course, a video conference uses far less energy than flying to another country for a face to face meeting and there are those who think we have bigger things to worry about than our digital footprint. But at current estimates the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, which is the same amount of energy as the aviation industry globally, pre Covid.

There is a very informative article, from the BBC which is worth a read if you are interested in understanding energy use. I will put a load of useful links at the bottom of this article. Just make sure you close those tabs after you have read the article because that’s one of the problems. How many tabs do you have open right now?

As consumers we have power and responsibility, power to influence brands and their behaviour, through our consumption and the responsibility to change our behaviour - and it might make us feel better too. These are some of the things we can and should be doing...

Bin it
Those screenshots, those multiple photos of the same things, those files and emails, (more on that later) and those websites. There are about 2 billion websites on the internet, and thousands more are being created every day. Yet only 15% of those are actually active, about 400 million. Which is staggering. 1.8 million new pages are published every 24 hours. But the reality is very few of them will ever be seen. In a study conducted on 2 million randomly selected pages 94.3% never got a single visitor. Now that study was done by a company specialising in SEO, so their answer is improve SEO. I would say if you have a web page which is not being visited you have to seriously consider hitting delete. Your website should not be a record of everything that has happened to your business since its inception. Being very generous, the average time spent on a web page is 90 seconds - the most they can read in that time is 400 words. If they concentrate.

Build it
How we design and build a site in the first place makes a big difference to energy consumption. We have just designed our first low impact site withoutform.space. Low Tech Magazine is another great example, which it should be coz it’s all about green energy. The site runs on a solar-powered server located in Barcelona. As the servers run out of energy the page background colour transitions from cream to white. When the weather is bad for a long time, the site goes offline. At the moment this low impact approach is at the fringes of web design, but commercial brands are starting to follow these principles. Organic Basics is a sustainable apparel company based in Copenhagen. They launched a low-impact version of their website that reduces data transfer by up to 70% compared to their regular website. Although inspired, like us by Low Tech, the decision was actually prompted by a customer who asked about their carbon footprint.

No thank you
At the time of writing this I had 83,694 emails, I have just done a very satisfying purge and got that down to 15,000. Still probably more than I need but it’s a start. In the case of email however size does matter. It’s the attachments that we send which create the weight rather than the number. And we have to stop sending two word emails!

Britons send over 64 million superfluous emails every day, according to a study by Ovo Energy. The study found that if every person in the U.K. sent one fewer email a day, carbon output would drop by 16,433 tons per year. In the scheme of things that's a relatively small change, but it represents a change in behaviour and consciousness about our actions and their impact. So you won't be getting any more thank you emails from me.

Our legacy lives on
In 2018 a YouGov survey found that there are 4.9bn dead users on Facebook alone. It is of course something which we are reluctant to think about, what happens to all that data after our death. The answer is it just stays there. Unless you have given someone your passwords to enable them to delete your accounts and the data they hold. It will always be there.

Facebook 'memorialises’ accounts enabling you to add a legacy contact – someone who can make decisions about your content after you pass away. But remember Facebook makes it difficult to delete your account, keeping everything even if you have deactivated it. It is disturbing that Facebook (or should I say Meta), who has not shown itself to be honest, transparent, or ethical can use our data for profit - even after we are dead. But I digress…

I could keep going, but practicing what I preach I will end here. Below are the links I mentioned.

30 women and non binary artists explore climate change

Microsoft explains how they calculate energy

Principles of a low impact site

Calculate the weight of your site (page by page)

Stop sending those three word emails (Chrome only)

Resources and tools for a greener web

The book to read if you are interested in digital minimalism

Frances Jackson
Founder OPX

4 min read

If we had reams of paper, piles of newspaper clips, heaps of family photos, shots of every sunset we had seen, and every meal we had eaten, shelves full of videos, boxes and boxes of games building up on every surface of our house, we would be one of those people we read stories about. The people who, when they die and are discovered days, weeks later, the police can't get in the front door because it’s blocked by the piles of stuff they have been hoarding for years.

This is the reality of our digital lives. We produce and store so much stuff. I am doing it now, even as I write this article. And that’s kind of ok, except because it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind, building up in data storage centers which are nothing like clouds – they are vast physical buildings using colossal amounts of energy.

Frankly I don't understand the numbers, there are so many different statistics flying around, and they are all super confusing, and often contradictory. But I do understand the principle – transferring and storing data (which happens every time we send an email, take and store a photo, browse the internet, attend a video conference) uses energy and that, more often than not, means burning fossil fuels. Because currently only 28% of the world's energy consumption is from renewables. When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. These gases trap heat in our atmosphere and are causing our climate crisis.

Yes the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are all committing to 100% use of renewable energy. By 2050 Microsoft has even committed to removing from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted both directly and indirectly through it’s supply chain and by the users of it’s platforms since it was founded in 1975. Which is a huge commitment. But the fact remains that currently only about 20% of the electricity used in the world’s data centres is renewable, with 80% of the power still coming from fossil fuels.

There are lots of trade offs of course, a video conference uses far less energy than flying to another country for a face to face meeting and there are those who think we have bigger things to worry about than our digital footprint. But at current estimates the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, which is the same amount of energy as the aviation industry globally, pre Covid.

There is a very informative article, from the BBC which is worth a read if you are interested in understanding energy use. I will put a load of useful links at the bottom of this article. Just make sure you close those tabs after you have read the article because that’s one of the problems. How many tabs do you have open right now?

As consumers we have power and responsibility, power to influence brands and their behaviour, through our consumption and the responsibility to change our behaviour - and it might make us feel better too. These are some of the things we can and should be doing...

Bin it
Those screenshots, those multiple photos of the same things, those files and emails, (more on that later) and those websites. There are about 2 billion websites on the internet, and thousands more are being created every day. Yet only 15% of those are actually active, about 400 million. Which is staggering. 1.8 million new pages are published every 24 hours. But the reality is very few of them will ever be seen. In a study conducted on 2 million randomly selected pages 94.3% never got a single visitor. Now that study was done by a company specialising in SEO, so their answer is improve SEO. I would say if you have a web page which is not being visited you have to seriously consider hitting delete. Your website should not be a record of everything that has happened to your business since its inception. Being very generous, the average time spent on a web page is 90 seconds - the most they can read in that time is 400 words. If they concentrate.

Build it
How we design and build a site in the first place makes a big difference to energy consumption. We have just designed our first low impact site withoutform.space. Low Tech Magazine is another great example, which it should be coz it’s all about green energy. The site runs on a solar-powered server located in Barcelona. As the servers run out of energy the page background colour transitions from cream to white. When the weather is bad for a long time, the site goes offline. At the moment this low impact approach is at the fringes of web design, but commercial brands are starting to follow these principles. Organic Basics is a sustainable apparel company based in Copenhagen. They launched a low-impact version of their website that reduces data transfer by up to 70% compared to their regular website. Although inspired, like us by Low Tech, the decision was actually prompted by a customer who asked about their carbon footprint.

No thank you
At the time of writing this I had 83,694 emails, I have just done a very satisfying purge and got that down to 15,000. Still probably more than I need but it’s a start. In the case of email however size does matter. It’s the attachments that we send which create the weight rather than the number. And we have to stop sending two word emails!

Britons send over 64 million superfluous emails every day, according to a study by Ovo Energy. The study found that if every person in the U.K. sent one fewer email a day, carbon output would drop by 16,433 tons per year. In the scheme of things that's a relatively small change, but it represents a change in behaviour and consciousness about our actions and their impact. So you won't be getting any more thank you emails from me.

Our legacy lives on
In 2018 a YouGov survey found that there are 4.9bn dead users on Facebook alone. It is of course something which we are reluctant to think about, what happens to all that data after our death. The answer is it just stays there. Unless you have given someone your passwords to enable them to delete your accounts and the data they hold. It will always be there.

Facebook 'memorialises’ accounts enabling you to add a legacy contact – someone who can make decisions about your content after you pass away. But remember Facebook makes it difficult to delete your account, keeping everything even if you have deactivated it. It is disturbing that Facebook (or should I say Meta), who has not shown itself to be honest, transparent, or ethical can use our data for profit - even after we are dead. But I digress…

I could keep going, but practicing what I preach I will end here. Below are the links I mentioned.

30 women and non binary artists explore climate change

BBC explains the numbers

Microsoft explains how they calculate energy

Principles of a low impact site

Low tech magazine