From the course: Digital Sustainability: How to Reduce Your Digital Footprint

The impact of energy consumption

- Think about all existing people and all existing businesses in the world. That's a lot, right? We are billions and billions. Now, consider that almost all of them are using at least one mobile phone, which means enormous amount of energy consumption. That is why it is necessary to reduce energy consumption and to implement solutions to improve energy efficiency. There are a lot of things you can do to reduce your energy consumption. I am going to give you several examples so you can think about what works for you. Use 100% renewable electricity when possible, or use rechargeable batteries. You could also opt for a laptop or tablet instead of desktop as a smaller equipment usually consumes less energy. And enable the energy-saving or optimization feature of electronic devices. You can unplug the charger when not in use. Use a power strip or power socket to disconnect appliances at the same time, and use the sleep mode for digital devices when not in use for a short period. These are a lot of recommendations, and I have more. You can reduce the brightness of your device screen, avoid using more than one device at the same time, close the applications not in use, and disable the autoplay or automatic playback of audio on websites and apps. And finally, opt for services and applications that use green data centers, which use efficient technologies and renewable energy to operate. Thinking carefully about each of these activities will help you to identify inefficient consumption areas. And implementing them will not only help you to reduce environmental impact, but they will also help you to save money in the long run.

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