Your Digital Carbon Footprint. Yes, It’s Real

Santo Domingo Savio School, Úbeda - SPAIN

Secondary students (8th grade)

Looking for topics of interest for our Debate and Speech classes, my students found this article which led to an interesting discussion about digital carbon footprint. 

"The phrase ‘digital carbon footprint’ might sound like an attempt to add one more thing to your growing plate of environmental concerns, but don’t worry – it’s real, but it’s also easy to mitigate.

A digital carbon footprint is the sum of energy required from all of your online activities. This number includes things that are very tangible to us, like the power necessary to keep all of our online electronics charged and running. It also has some more far-reaching factors, like the energy required by the servers hosting our favorite TV shows, movies, videos, and games. The energy needed for the manufacturing process of consumer electronics is another element to consider, as is the fossil fuel consumption for shipping these products. Yet another piece of our digital carbon footprint is our devices’ lifespan and disposal methods. All of these things combined create our digital carbon footprint. It’s looking a little more real now, right?..."

Use these links to read the whole article: 

https://blog.donboscogreen.org/blog-articles/056-your-digital-carbon-footprint-yes-its-real

https://porch.com/advice/digital-carbon-footprint-yes-real