Digital, tech and sustainability have been buzzwords floating around this year. December’s event on digital sustainability hosted by Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) cemented it further and really got me thinking. With that in mind, I thought it would be handy to round-up my thoughts and offer some practical advice to get you off the ground with digital sustainability.
In recent years, digital has been highlighted within international reports and conferences, including in the recent IPCC report, as an avenue to combat climate change and a route to a sustainable future.
Digital has brought us so much. It has and continues to connect us with each other including me and you, even as you read this piece. Digital has become an avenue to stay connected with our families, friends and colleagues from around the world, making sure we do not miss those special moments!
Digital has allowed us to access the latest publications from around the world, empowering individuals through self-service to booking their own hospital appointments to paying their parking fine (… yes, the dreaded parking fine). Digital has transformed our workplaces, teams and services to help us move forward in a user-centred approach.
Digital is a resource, to provide digital there is a need to use physical products and energy, which can be intense in terms of resource and overall sustainability. This brings us to the concept of digital sustainability, the process of applying sustainability principles (social, economic and environmental) to digital products, services, and data delivered via the internet.
As we closed the CDPS digital sustainability online event, I thought what a refreshing event it was. The session covered, what does digital sustainability mean to you? What does it matter? What excites you about digital sustainability?
The event had panel members with different expertise on common themes with a highly engaged community ready with diverse questions. The event sat well as part of Wales Climate Week and at the doorstep of COP28 in Dubai, as the world looked for a leaner, greener, fairer, sustainable future. Digital sustainability is one that can deliver us exactly that.
As promised, here some key takeaways and practice advice:
High level thinking
- Digital technologies and transformations are key enablers for attaining the sustainability goals of the European Green Deal and contributing to the Paris Agreement and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to leverage this potential and to facilitate the achievement of the 2050 climate-neutrality objective, digital and sustainability should work hand in hand.
- Digital transformations offer new prospects to achieve Net Zero, unlock innovation, provide new opportunities to workers and organisations, to decarbonise and generally do more with less.
Starting out
- All organisations and governments are in the same boat, start today, don’t get left behind.
- Start looking at green working practices from remote/hybrid working, travel policies, services that would benefit from being digitalised and how best to do this sustainably.
- Net Zero is complex and requires active decisions. Sometimes just starting out is one of the biggest decisions you can make.
Digital is a resource
- Digital is a physical resource; resource is finite and needs to be managed efficiently.
- Create sustainable, energy-efficient websites by optimising images to reduce file size, be strategic with video use, set up web caching, delete what you don't need, improve site navigation to make it easy to find information and use a green web host.
- Use the Green Web foundation ‘Green Web Checker’ to see if your website hosting is powered by green energy. If it is not, consider changing energy providers to support the sustainability movement.
- Clouds storage and backup – Imagine Cloud as your physical cupboard or even office. We tend to save and back-up into the Cloud without foresight. Sit down, have a look through what you have saved in the Cloud and actively question; think what can be removed? Do I really need the 20 burst photos? Decluttering can feel good too.
- Rethink your subscriber list size – some subscribers may be inactive yet taking up energy each time you for example send out an e-shot. Consider who still would like to get your monthly newsletter? Who engages with the content you share? It is worth sending out an ‘unsubscribe’ mailshot annually to declutter.
Procurement and supply chains
- Plan your organisation’s buying activity earlier to allow an opportunity to filter through the buying process.
- The production process and use of products/services have significant carbon associated and therefore should be designed and bought in with the Circular Economy principles in mind, keeping the product/service in use sustainably as long as possible. To find out more visit: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview
- Think reduce, remove, reuse/redistribute, repair, remanufacture/refurbish, recycle. Consider buying refurbished products.
- Consider asking your suppliers to be accredited with a suitable sustainability certification such as Green Dragon Award, ISO14001 (Environmental Management) or even ISO14067 (Product Carbon Footprint). Such certifications carry sustainability and environmental into practice and processes.
- However, before rushing in with supplier certification requests. Review what is essential rather than just making certifications a tick-box exercise. Some SMEs for example, may not have a certification, they may not be able to afford them but still contributing to digital sustainability. Where a supplier lacks an accreditation during the buying process, ask the supplier about policies and procedures they follow to support digital sustainability.
- Sustainability is full of jargon so talk a common language during buying activity. For example, a small SME may not understand Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3, upstream, downstream, carbon budget when used in tender documents. Talk to them about resource, efficiency, energy – be relatable. Talk about monitoring, measuring and managing their impact their business and digital services has on the environment and society.
Find a balance
- Sustainability is broader than just carbon emissions (i.e., environmental impact), find a balance in your decisions.
- Sustainability has 3 pillars that are interconnect: social, environmental and economic. Don’t allow climate change (environmental) hijack all your sustainability decisions.
- Manage and create digital services with accessibility, disability and inclusion in mind too (i.e., social impact) - leave no one behind.
- Digital can deliver other sustainability carbon gains from other sectors but digitalising them may make you use them more – think in advance of unintended consequences.
- Approach change with a sustainability and innovative mindset.