{"id":1063,"date":"2021-03-03T12:50:39","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T12:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2021-03-03T12:50:39","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T12:50:39","slug":"why-digital-isnt-always-greener-or-fairer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/blog\/digitalteam\/2021\/03\/03\/why-digital-isnt-always-greener-or-fairer\/","title":{"rendered":"Why digital isn’t always greener or fairer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few years, and especially since the global pandemic where many physical activities have moved online, it has become more important than ever to ask ourselves how to make our web services more energy efficient and reduce their carbon footprint.<\/p>\n

As someone who has always worked in digital roles, I thought for a long time that moving everything online would make me happy. But fresh insights bring fresh perspectives, and I\u2019ve become more cautious about the ways in which we use digital tools to tackle real world challenges.<\/p>\n

The environmental impact of the Internet<\/a> has brought a new sense of urgency to many digital practitioners, including myself, over the past decade. If this topic is new to you, then in essence the Internet \u2013 everything from data centres, to telecoms networks and end-user devices like phones and laptops \u2013 uses a lot of electricity. In fact, if you add it all together, the internet uses roughly the same amount of electricity as the entire United Kingdom, one of the world\u2019s largest economies (Tom Greenwood, Sustainable Web Design<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In this blog post, I acknowledge what we are doing as a digital user experience team, some of our ongoing challenges as part of the OneWeb<\/a> programme, and also what other steps we need to take, collectively and individually, to tackle this issue.<\/p>\n

#1. Simple, small and effective content has a lower environmental burden<\/h3>\n

Simple, small and effective content is good for the environment and also better for your users, and you!<\/p>\n

Design and content have a big impact on energy efficiency. From search engine optimisation (SEO), content design, and use of images, videos, fonts, to code and design choices. Running a popular digital service always has a cost associated with it, but we don\u2019t tend to factor in the cost to the environment. The assumption is often that digital means green, but this is far from the truth.<\/p>\n

In the words of Gerry McGovern, author of World Wide Waste<\/a>:
\n\u201cOur ability to create stuff using digital tools far outstrips our ability (or willingness) to organize and manage what we have created. Dealing with the consequences of easy production and poor content management is a growing challenge\u201d. – @gerrymcgovern<\/a><\/p>\n

To illustrate Gerry\u2019s point I\u2019ve included a snapshot from our 2018 content audit where we estimated our digital web estate to contain roughly 4 million web pages. Only 156,000 of these have been accessed in the last 3 years and just 8,000 pages account for 90% of all traffic to our digital estate.<\/p>\n

\"Content
\nCaption: representation of access to our web content, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

COVID-19 may have reduced traffic emissions, but it exacted a toll elsewhere for this saving. Like many other academic institutions this past year, education had to be delivered online. The University\u2019s daily contribution to global carbon emissions as a result of online lectures and staff meetings is likely equal to that of someone flying from London to New York\u00b9. Given this additional burden, there is even more reason to consider how we make content that is designed to last, and how we focus on completing meaningful tasks rather than \u2018vanity projects\u2019 that needlessly consume time, energy and budgets\u2026<\/p>\n

Now – Southampton is not unique in this matter. This is a consistent problem for almost every large, complex organisation.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why an organisation\u2019s digital estate becomes unnecessarily bloated and so much content goes unvisited. It might be that:<\/p>\n