Cut the ‘cam’ and be a planet saviour!

According to a study, turning off the smartphone or web cam during virtual calls can help reduce your carbon footprint by 96 per cent

Turning off your camera during a virtual meeting can do a lot to reduce your carbon footprint, a new study suggests. The study, published in the journal ‘Resources, Conservation and Recycling’, showed that switching off your camera during a web call can reduce a person’s carbon footprints by 96 per cent.

“If you just focus on one type of footprint, you miss out on others that can provide a more holistic look at environmental impact,” said researcher Roshanak “Roshi” Nateghi, Professor at Purdue University in the US. According to the researchers, streaming content in standard definition rather than in high definition while using apps such as Netflix or Hulu also could bring an 86 per cent reduction.

For the study, the team estimated the carbon, water and land footprints associated with each gigabyte of data used in YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and 12 other platforms, as well as in online gaming and miscellaneous web surfing.

As expected, the more video used in an application, the larger the footprints, the researchers said. The internet’s carbon footprint had already been increasing before Covid-19 lockdowns, accounting for about 3.7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But the water and land footprints of internet infrastructure have largely been overlooked in studies of how internet use impacts the environment, the researcher said.

The researchers investigated these footprints and how they might be affected by increased internet traffic, finding that the footprints not only vary from one web platform to another, but also for countries. The team gathered data for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US.

Processing and transmitting internet data in the US, the researchers found, has a carbon footprint that is 9 per cent higher than the world median, but water and land footprints that are 45 per cent and 58 per cent lower, respectively.