It's easy to overlook the impact digital design has on our environment. From your desktop computer to your website hosting provider, information technology has (often significant) environmental repercussions.
All electronic equipment—even the stuff you don't house in your office—requires energy to run. And in the United States, around 86% of our energy comes from fossil fuels (source: Energy Information Association). The burning of these fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas), sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide (also known as smog), all of which can damage air quality, lead to climate change, and impact human health.
Digital designers often forget that our environmental impact goes way beyond the mouse at our fingertips. In 2006 alone, server farms used up enough energy to power 5.8 million homes. Backup power sources that protect equipment and data (imagine the backup battery you might keep under your desk scaled to an entire warehouse) require enormous amounts of energy, indirectly adding to the carbon footprint of every web project. And then there's the e-waste: almost 85% of all electronic equipment ends up in landfills, including the toxic chemicals and heavy metals they're made from (source: US EPA).
With all of this information, it's clear that adapting your design process to account for the things you can't immediately see is the most effective way to reduce the carbon footprint of your next digital project.
Related terms: Carbon Offset, e-waste, Green-e certification, renewable energy
