TBC

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Welcome to MoorBytes, a short - form podcast brought to you by Moorhouse. In each episode, we'll be discussing trends and insights we really care about and breaking these down into digestible chunks.

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In this first series, we'll be taking a deep dive into the often complex but always fascinating relationship between digital and sustainability. Welcome to the next episode of MoorBytes, where we'll be joined by Toby Radcliffe, founder of Zero Bees, a sustainability consulting and data agency working to decrease organisations' environmental impact.

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Today, we'll be taking a look at how to reduce your carbon footprint with a particular focus on digital emissions. Welcome, Toby. Hi, Katie. So, to kick off the episode, Toby, please can you explain what digital emissions are and why they're a significant concern in today's digital age?

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Brilliant. People often think that the digital world is low impact because it's something out there, it's not physical. But actually, digital emissions relate to the physical infrastructure that sits behind the data we see or the ads that we consume.

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And it's the data flows and the consumption. So, simply, that is data centres, it's transmission energy going through mobile networks and broadband, it is user devices and it's emissions related to making and disposing of the physical assets that drive those.

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Super. So, for a company, what would this look like in their office or in their organisation? For a company, I guess the key departments that will be thinking about internet emissions or ICT emissions would be, obviously, if you're a tech company, it would be your product team, thinking about your tech stack and what data flows are happening and where you're managing analytics and things like that and your data centres.

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But it's also going to be your ICT department, your equipment department, who are managing that. managing your assets, your laptops, the equipment you've got on site, and how they're disposed of critically.

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And then the one that people forget about will be the marketing team. So if you're a consumer -facing or an advertising organisation, what you put out into the digital ecosystem, not just your website, but the ads you have are also going to have quite a big footprint.

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Super interesting. And going down to another level, what would this look like for an individual? What would their digital missions look like? As an individual, I think there's lots of things we don't think about from our digital footprint.

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Rightly, we're concentrating on the food we eat, the flights we take, the way we travel, and even our pensions. But actually, en masse, we're driving consumption that is the internet. This is really important because academic estimates are...

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the Internet's greenhouse gas footprint put it around 2 to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So if the Internet was a country it would be fifth in the world in terms of emissions. That will put it somewhere between Brazil and Russia.

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That's crazy. So for us as individuals that is driven by the amount of time that we spend on social media. On average in the UK we spend nearly two hours a day on social media. Not working but just scrolling Facebook and TikTok and Instagram.

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That's consuming data and therefore using energy. It's using energy on our device, it's transmitting. Of the 56 million social media use in the UK that's 100 million hours of scrolling a day. That's absolutely obscene.

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So there's that which is a part of our digital footprint. There's also the fact that almost all of us will have a draw at home which is full of old smartphones. Laptops from likely over the early noughties.

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I've got a bucket full of wires from your broadband connections and things like that. So those things we can we can put back into the recycling ecosystem and get back into other electronic equipment.

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And then think about how we use the Internet. Get ad blockers. Advertising can account for a disproportionate amount of the data that you receive and use on your mobile device or on your laptop. Yeah really interesting.

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Also obviously less scrolling, deemed scrolling, better improvements to your mental health and also obviously the planet. So now we know what digital emissions are and what they might look like for obviously a business or a consumer.

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Can you talk about any surprising big emitters? Like what might surprise people in terms of their digital footprint? Yeah the thing that surprised us when we started working on this a few years ago was of that three to four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions that is driven by the Internet and the data we consume and the devices that we're consumed on.

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Almost half of that is due to digital ads. So programmatic and digital advertising. is driving anywhere between 25 and 70% of the internet's overall emissions. And that's really surprising with two reasons.

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One is because we assume that the internet is there to provide us with connectivity and data and information, allow us to work and have our hobbies online. But actually, the vast majority of that data is actually to sell us things and to help us consume and to get more products and brands into our daily lives and those touch points.

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So I thought that was really surprising. And then thinking about how that then relates back to the global greenhouse gas. Generally, that's a gigaton of carbon every year, just down to digital emissions from advertising.

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Yeah, that's actually crazy. So if a company is considering how to tackle their digital emissions and want to understand what are the biggest factors that make up their carbon footprint, where does Zero B's come in and what do you offer for clients?

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We're a mission -led... organization so we are all about accelerating sustainability and decarbonisation across mainly SMEs but throughout value chains. Digital emissions is one part of what we do around our carbon offer but we we do comprehensive greenhouse gas assessments and reduction plans.

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For tech companies, for media companies a lot of that will focus on digital emissions because that's the main part of what a lot of those businesses do. For others who are more bricks and mortar it won't be so much about digital emissions but even then it'll be on the fringe will be what's your website doing, how much data are you using, where does the digital ecosystem touch across your business.

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Yeah for us we'll focus on digital emissions with media companies and tech companies. Yeah super interesting thank you. And if we're just then thinking about future action what tangible next steps can organizations do to start addressing their carbon footprint?

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I'd always start with understanding why you're doing it. Why are you thinking about decarbonizing? Is it to win your business? Is it to retain talent? Is it to reduce costs? Is it to align your brand purpose and impact?

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Understanding that will really help you maintain your focus on it and actually help you prioritize against other business demands. Then it would be about starting simple and that might be just moving on to renewable tariff like something really easy you don't need to measure for that.

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Then it would be measure your footprint as far as you can as comprehensively as you can and reduce any wastage. Encourage your suppliers to similarly learn from your peers. Understand that it is a data and a knowledge journey as much as anything but if you learn more by starting to do it.

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and get started. We all need to be on board a journey to decarbonisation. Our climate is in crisis. We need to do this as individuals, as governments, and as our organisations. When we hit a social tipping point of about 20 or 25% of the population who are engaged or seeing or normalising climate action, that's when we'll start to see systemic change.

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Thank you so much, Toby, for taking us on that journey to learn more about digital emissions and our carbon footprint more broadly. So interesting to learn about how advertising makes up such a large proportion of those digital emissions.

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It's great to get your stare on the immediate actions we can all take to address our environmental impact. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks, Katie. If this topic interested you and you want to check out the work of Toby and the team, head over to zerobees .com to learn more about the best services and offering.

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and thanks again for tuning into our latest episode of MoorBytes.