The CO2 footprint of social media

Our digital consumption is responsible for around 10 percent of global electricity consumption. Interesting fact: Using green electricity significantly improves the CO2 balance. IMAGE: ©Elshad Karimov | Stock.Adobe.com

How you can save CO2 online – 6 tips

We spend many hours a day in front of the computer, smartphone, tablet and TV. To make this more environmentally friendly, here are some figures and tips for you.

#1 Green electricity

The electricity consumption of our digital devices can automatically be made greener if you use real green electricity. Many of our sustainable Green PearlsⓇ accommodations even produce their own green electricity and are therefore an active part of the energy transition.

#2 When watching television: Do without HDR and home cinema

Televisions are getting bigger and bigger and can do more and more technically. One of these innovations is called High Definition Range (HDR) and makes the picture look even more vivid. However, this feature is incredibly energy-intensive and was even the reason why the European energy efficiency label for televisions had to be revised.

In the menu, you can deactivate HDR on some smart TVs (and perhaps only use it if you really want to enjoy a great fantasy movie where you really concentrate on the images). Furthermore, smaller screens generally consume less power.

Incidentally, some sustainable hotels do without a TV completely, as you can read in this blog post about hotel TVs.

#3 Do without the image display for emails

A smart email program can be set up so that images are only displayed on request. When I receive a newsletter and emails with elaborate image signatures etc., I see small “x “s (in Outlook). Only when I click on the “Show images” command are these loaded.

According to Carbonliteracy

a short mail on the laptop produces 0.2 grams and
an e-mail that is written for ten minutes and read for three minutes generates 17 grams of CO2.
Emails with “large attachments” even require 50 grams, according to Danube University.

#4 Save CO2 with WhatsApp

According to the company, around 100 billion messages are sent via WhatsApp every day.

According to Think Digital Green, a single WhatsApp message causes relatively little carbon dioxide emissions at 0.02 grams of CO2
a photo, however, is already 2 to 4 grams and
30 to 56 grams for a minute of video.

Here you can simply train yourself to leave out everything that is unnecessary or instead of bombarding your group with 40 vacation pictures, simply select the three most beautiful ones.

#5 CO2 emissions from TikTok are higher than YouTube

As Environment.co calculates

one minute of watching TikTok causes 2.63 grams of CO2 emissions and
one minute of YouTube 0.46 grams

The reason for this is that Google, as the owner of YouTube, relies on renewable energy, which significantly reduces the CO2 footprint (here you can directly see an example of the importance of green electricity, which we mentioned in point 1).

#6 CO2 footprint of Instagram

As you may have noticed, Instagram now also has a lot of moving images – but since it is still a photo platform, it causes a carbon footprint of

1.05 grams of CO2 per Instagram minute

less than TikTok (but interestingly more than YouTube). Source: CarbonLitaracy

Conclusion: Our digital technologies consume around 8 to 10 percent of the world’s electricity and are responsible for 2 to 4 percent of global CO2 emissions. You should therefore take this into account.

PS : Have you ever thought about a digital detox? Here you can find out what a digital detox weekend at the HUBERTUS Moutain Refugio Allgäu could look like: