One thing people can do to stop the data juggernaut, he said, is to send fewer pointless emails: “One [figure] that often does the rounds is that for every standard email, that equates to about 4g of carbon. If we then think about the amount of what we mainly call ‘legacy data’ that we hold, so if we think about all the digital photos that we have, for instance, there will be a cumulative impact.”
Steps we can take to reduce our carbon footprint include avoiding the “dreaded ‘reply all’ button”, Hodgkinson added. “If we think that our email or the data we produce is carbon neutral, we will never ask the question of ourselves, in terms of: ‘If I do X, what’s the consequence?’ And so when we think about the likes of different analytics, we think about things like ChatGPT, for instance. Again, for many individuals, they believe that to be carbon neutral, but it isn’t. So asking ourselves those questions which we’ve never really asked before within organisations and individuals can make such a big difference for behavioural change.”