We emit around 39.9 billion tons of CO2 every year. Four percent of that comes from digital technologies, including the internet: every click, every file in the cloud, and every download leaves a trace.
For example, one hour of Netflix viewing results in 10kg of CO2 emissions related to the bandwidth alone.
When we consider carbon emissions, we often ignore the digital footprints left by our digital lives—not just in our personal lives but also in our professional ones. However, even digital technologies and online activities have a carbon footprint since greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and energy consumption are associated with using and operating digital devices, networks, and services.
Marketers, in particular, should note that those digital campaigns and ‘quantity over quality’ content strategies are amping up the carbon footprint of our work.
Understanding and mitigating this digital carbon footprint aligns with ethical business practices and significantly impacts our marketing strategies. It’s a crucial component in sustainable marketing and the ecomarketer’s toolkit.
This article will help you understand:
- What the digital carbon footprint is,
- Why marketers should care about it,
- How marketing contributes to a digital carbon footprint, and
- Three actionable steps you can take to mitigate the footprint of your campaigns.
What is the digital carbon footprint?
The digital carbon footprint refers to the greenhouse gas emissions generated by digital technologies, including the internet, data storage, and electronic devices. It counts in the energy consumption required to power servers, data centers, network infrastructure, and user devices, as well as the associated emissions from manufacturing, transportation, and disposal of these technologies.
Every newsletter, YouTube video, and blog post requires energy—even the cloud. According to research by Climate by Selectra, for example, the carbon footprint of cloud storage is higher than that of the global airline industry. This is because one data center consumes the same energy as 50,000 homes in the US.
From there, it’s easy to see why marketers should care about their digital carbon footprint.
Why should marketers care about their digital carbon footprint?
A high digital carbon footprint can impact a company’s reputation. By reducing their digital carbon footprint, marketers can align their brand with sustainability values and enhance brand reputation.
On the regulatory side, governments and regulatory bodies are tightening the standards and pressuring businesses to curb carbon emissions and promote sustainability. Marketers who proactively address their digital carbon footprint ensure compliance with existing and future environmental regulations, avoiding potential penalties and legal issues.
Addressing the digital carbon footprint is about ensuring businesses’ long-term viability and resilience while proactively taking climate action. With sustainable marketing practices that reduce environmental impact, marketers can future-proof their businesses and use their creativity to contribute to a better, healthier planet for future generations.
How does marketing contribute to a company’s digital carbon footprint?
Marketing contributes to a company’s digital carbon footprint by consuming energy and resources throughout the entire digital ecosystem, from advertising and communication channels to website operations, content distribution, data analytics, and e-commerce transactions.
When it comes to organic marketing, three areas are guilty:
#1 Advertising
Online advertising campaigns, including display ads, video ads, and social media promotions, require significant data processing and server resources. Each impression, click, or interaction with an ad consumes energy, contributing to the digital carbon footprint.
Sending marketing emails involves data transmission and storage and the operation of email servers and infrastructure. While a single email emits only 4.0g of CO2, the cumulative impact of large email marketing campaigns, particularly with extensive subscriber lists, is substantial.
#2 Content creation
Producing and distributing digital content, such as blog posts, articles, videos, and podcasts, requires energy-intensive processes, including content creation, editing, encoding, and distribution. Content management systems, cloud storage, and content delivery networks (CDNs) further amplify the energy consumption associated with content marketing efforts.
#3 Website operations and analytics
Maintaining and operating a company website involves hosting data on servers, which consume energy for processing and storage. Website design elements, such as multimedia content, scripts, and plugins, can also increase the energy requirements for loading and displaying web pages, contributing to the digital carbon footprint.
Did you know that 1.76g of CO2 is generated for every page view? If you have 10,000 page views per month, that is the equivalent of what one tree can absorb in carbon.
Data analytics tools and platforms also consume energy to process and store large datasets, and gathering, analyzing, and processing data for marketing purposes, such as customer segmentation, targeting, and campaign optimization, requires computing power and data storage infrastructure.
So these are the culprits. And what can you, the ecomarketer, do about it?
3 steps to mitigate the digital carbon footprint of your marketing
Businesses and marketers are increasingly recognizing the importance of reducing their digital carbon footprint, and cleaning up your digital house is an important step that ensures that your marketing is doing good for the people and the planet.
Here are three action steps to support your digital carbon footprint reduction.
#1 Rethink your marketing campaigns
Here, the solution to reduce the digital carbon footprint is minimalism.
Think of small, impactful, and useful content throughout your website. If you don’t think the current content is performing correctly, delete it from the website. If you think it can be better, optimize it further instead of writing a new piece of content. Remove useless content and strive for value and usefulness while optimizing for SEO and your ideal audience.
Lastly, consider the human impact of your content. Embrace better, longer, and more insightful content instead of chasing after AI-generated or superficial SEO content. Make content shorter and easier to read. Remove jargon! Think minimalist.
#2 Optimize your website
Running an efficient and low-impact website is one of the most impactful sustainable content strategies and initiatives you can take as an ecomarketer.
If you consider yourself an ecomarketer practicing sustainable marketing, sustainable website design must be in your content arsenal. As one of the central content pillars of your marketing strategy, it likely has the highest impact to reduce when cleaning up your digital house.
The first mighty step is to reduce.
Consider the images, graphics, and videos and find ways to delete unnecessary data files. Next, you can consider reducing those that remain to the size and dimensions of the image’s placeholder on the website. Images and videos should be a top priority when practicing low-carbon website maintenance.
Format every image uploaded to the website with the correct size and reduce the file size to below 300 KB. You can also downsize your website to only 5 pages and use anchor links to send people to specific sections. Use a lazy load feature to reduce the load time of images and videos.
Here’s how we built our own sustainable website.
#3 Perform a Scope 3 audit
Conducting a Scope 3 audit on marketing technology (Martech) helps marketers reduce their digital carbon footprint. When you understand the indirect emissions associated with your digital operations, such as advertising platforms, email marketing providers, and data analytics tools, you can identify high-emission areas and make informed decisions about selecting more energy-efficient technologies and optimizing usage.
These steps can easily kickstart your digital carbon footprint reduction and start your journey as an ecomarketer.
Marketers can do better for the people and the planet
At MTC The Content Agency, we actively apply a sustainable marketing lens to all our content work. If you’d like to learn more about whether our services are right for your team, review our packages or book a meeting. You can also broaden your knowledge of sustainable marketing by subscribing to our CEO’s newsletter, the Ecomarketer Lens.
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