What’s the Environmental Impact on All the Messages We Send?

Data powers businesses, but it’s not just confined to the professional world—we share vast amounts of data in our personal lives, too. Even seemingly trivial communications like chats, grocery requests, and meme or pet picture exchanges are data. And wherever there’s data, there’s a place where it’s stored.

The key question is: do you know where your data is stored? And, do you understand the impact of that storage?

Your Memes Aren't Just Floating in Space—They're Stored Somewhere

It might seem like the data you send from your phone simply transfers directly to the recipient, but that’s not the case. Instead, it’s stored in the cloud or in data centers. These centers house the endless stream of messages we send daily, storing them on countless hard drives that power cloud services.

But all these hard drives require energy to function.

Depending on the infrastructure, the energy usage can be surprisingly high. As more data is stored and used, more energy is consumed. Here’s a simplified view of the situation:

• Increasing amounts of data are being generated and shared.
• This data is stored in data centers.
• These data centers consume energy to maintain and manage the stored data.

More Data = More Energy

Logically, more data storage demands more energy.

As we generate more data over time, the energy required to store it increases, eventually leading to a negative environmental impact. To make matters worse, a staggering 68% of data created by businesses is never used again, making it wasteful to store unnecessary data.

Storing this extra data isn’t just environmentally costly—it’s financially costly too, along with the associated risks of holding onto it. It’s a lose-lose scenario.

Minimize Dark Data

Consider this: is every message you send really necessary?

Sometimes a phone call or face-to-face conversation can replace an email. Sometimes you can show a meme in person rather than sending it digitally. Reducing the number of messages sent can be a small but meaningful way to reduce your data footprint.

While this may not drastically affect your bottom line, it’s a step toward reducing your environmental impact—and it’s an easy place to start.

We can help. Give us a call at 301-740-9955 to learn about how we can help consolidate your computing to help reduce your organization’s impact on the environment.