100 points to know about...
Eco-Design Web Development

In 2021, the digital economy consumed 6 to 10% of global electricity. Moreover, it is also responsible for nearly 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. But what actions can each of us take to limit these emissions within our company?

We will discover together the best practices to use digital products more efficiently and responsibly in order to raise the awareness of employees and make mindful digital culture one of our company´s values. We have already learnt what can we do as users in order to reduce our digital impact on the environment. Most of these daily actions can be transferred to our office.
Here we introduce you to some of the best practises on how to use digital products more efficiently and responsibly in a workplace.

First step:

Extend the lifespan of your equipment
It is important to notice that from production to the end of its life, electrical devices have a significant impact on the environment. The manufacturing of a PC could cut in half the environmental impact if the lifespan is extended. Maybe your business phone does not need to be changed and is in good working condition. Keeping your electronic devices longer is the biggest step you can take to help reduce their impact.

Second step:

Give your equipment a second life
You have at least two options of how to give your equipment a second life:

First option: find an alternative way of use. An old PC can serve as a second screen for remote work, while smartphones can be used as storage or a photo camera.

Second option: recycle devices and buy refurbished ones. Why does your company need new phones every two years? A lot of companies chose to use refurbished devices that can perfectly match the necessities of the user.

Step three:

Reduce the energy consumption of your devices
Smartphones for examples use a lot of energy, even when they are switched off. One tip could be to close any applications that use a lot of data, as well as geolocalisation, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not being used or set your screen to dark mode

Step four:

Reduce the number of accounts
It is a smart choice leading to the reduction of energy use and thus decreasing environmental impact. How many accounts do you have? Most people have more than one account and this is not good because they consume a lot of energy. Think about this: if you have 2 accounts, you use twice as much energy.

Step five:

Print less and better
With the rise of technology we expected a decrease of paper use. Instead, 25% of documents are still printed and thrown out. Every employee can help improve this situation by printing documents only when necessary. Depending on your needs, print in black and white, use environmentally certified recycled paper and print on both sides of the paper.

Step six:

Lighten your browsing habits
The average distance travelled by digital data is around 15,000 km. We have several actions that can limit the amount of data we use every day like:

• choosing websites and applications with a lighter impact: there are applications like Google, Facebook and Apple that have committed to powering their data centres with 100 per cent renewable energy. But not all applications and websites are like them: think about Amazon Web Services (AWS) which has not yet made the same commitment. In addition, most of the websites use CDN (Content Delivery Network) because it speeds up the loading speed of website pages. CDN is not positive because it uses various networks: not all of them use renewable sources.
• videos watched in the office or on any small screen can be streamed in low definition
• turn off autoplay features, and opt to download videos instead of streaming. It also helps to reduce your data use.
• regularly deleting your temporary files and browsing history
• entering specific web addresses can limit your reliance on search engines. Even if it is a small change, it contributes a lot to the CO2 emission.

Step seven:

Send and receive fewer emails

• The more mail you send, the more CO2 you emit. Make sure to send only necessary emails.
• Moreover, optimizing the size of sent files by compressing attachments or using file transfer services for larger documents is a great way of sending a sustainable email.
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