Tuesday Go Ponder: The Environmental Effect of the Internet

This is a reblog from EcoGrrl

Earth Day had me working in the garden, riding my bicycle, doing my yoga practice, and…working, using the internet for a good 6-7 hours talking to candidates, sourcing, communicating with hiring teams, writing for clients, and other work that just happens online.  My core work is in hiring for tech startups and a key part of my career coaching involves using GoogleDocs to collaborate with my clients, so I admit, my livelihood is dependent on the internet.

We’re sucking up an unbelievable amount of energy here, y’all. 10M+ data centers in the US and growing. Spammers not just annoying us, but violently affecting the environment for no good reason. And we’re all indoors…away from the earth that gave us life.

Read HERE to learn more about data centers that allow us to go online, send emails, interact with people all over the world.  All that spam, all those useless emails, all those games, all that wasted time on Facebook…they do have consequences.  And remember, doing it on our smartphones doesn’t make it any less of an energy sucker.

The data we’re using online goes somewhere, and these “server farms” are using MASSIVE amounts of energy, heavily impacting the energy availability to consumers in the regions they are built in (check out last fall’s article in the Oregonian for an example: Data centers proliferate in Oregon, and power planners raise a red flag).  All the big tech companies brag about how green they are, but seriously, compared to what?

Here is a powerful infographic to help you understand more about how our use of the internet is massively impacting our environment.

Tuesday Go Ponder: The Environmental Effect of the Internet.

Check the link for the infographic.