An estimated 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions are caused by our electronic devices, data and Internet usage, and it looks set to only increase. Marco Fanizzi, Vice President and General Manager EMEA at Commvault, explains how companies need to evaluate their data and discard data which is no longer needed by the business.
With our global impact continuing to grow and increasingly damaging the planet, it is essential that we take stock and reassess our actions. Politicians, activists and charities have been warning us for years to reduce our carbon footprint in order to protect our planet. It’s time we listen.
The decade of 2010-2019 was the warmest ever recorded. 2019 was the second warmest year on record, while 2020 was the hottest year ever recorded in Europe. Carbon dioxide levels today are the highest they’ve been for 800,000 years.
The three-week virtual conference, held in June 2021, for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change indicated the urgency of the situation. Despite the delayed conference scheduled for later this year in Glasgow, the organisation met online beforehand to discuss the urgent issues of the climate.
Avoiding single-use plastics, conserving water and using public transportation are easy switches that individuals have been advised to make. Similar advice, however, is not so clear for businesses.
If every business had the tools and initiatives to prioritise sustainability and reduce its carbon footprint, the environment would reap the benefits. This would be especially prominent if businesses from all industries across the world took these steps. The technology industry, in particular, could dominate this movement. With the necessary innovation to make discoveries, it has the potential to help resolve the climate change issue.
The pandemic’s lasting impact
The COVID-19 pandemic of the last 18 months has left no business unaffected. Every industry has been disrupted and the UK government’s work from home order has permanently changed the way that organisations operate.
Digital Transformation swept the nation in March 2020 as businesses rushed to pull together resources and solutions that allowed them to maintain operations. New IT infrastructure and processes were established to enable employees to work from home.
As we move towards the post-pandemic world, it seems unlikely that things will revert back to how they were before. Remote working has become the norm – 84% of UK business leaders plan to keep hybrid working practices in place and 42% of European businesses are continuing to invest in new tech solutions to support a hybrid workforce.
Every day there are more big businesses announcing their plans to enforce permanent hybrid working models. These trends are apparent across the globe and spanning all industries. From ASDA’s offices in the UK to UBS’ 72,000 global employees, few workers will be heading back to their offices full-time once COVID restrictions are lifted.
While many employers and employees alike welcome this flexibility, the planet does not.
As workers set up offices in their homes and those forced into self-isolation have become reliant on streaming services like Netflix to pass the time, Internet usage and data consumption has skyrocketed. Worldwide Internet traffic is 25%-30% higher than pre-pandemic rates, as of April 2021.
This is bad news for the environment. Data storage and Internet usage requires power and electricity, and thus predominantly relies upon the burning of fossil fuels. An estimated 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions are caused by our electronic devices, data and Internet usage. This figure is set to double by 2025 as this upward trend shows no signs of slowing anytime soon.
Advice for consumers on how to be more environmentally friendly when using the Internet is easy to obtain and understand. Individuals can make small changes that make big differences: streaming film and music in lower resolutions, keeping your old devices rather than upgrading at the first opportunity and choosing sustainable businesses, for example. But how do businesses become the sustainable organisations that consumers want to buy from?
Data can be detriment
Every business produces data, no matter its size or industry, and this data is the crown jewels of business. It allows them to operate, grow and make profits. However, a lot of this data is not essential and could be the key to reducing their environmental impact.
Data centres have the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry. As businesses continue to produce more data, Climate Home News predicts that, by 2025, data centres will consume a fifth of global electricity and produce 3.2% of worldwide carbon emissions.
In order to slow this growth and reduce the impact on the planet, businesses should aim to reduce their data. By limiting how much data we produce, less space will be required in data centres for its storage and security. Fewer data centres will be needed, thus electricity will be saved and fewer carbon emissions will be produced.
To allow businesses to reduce their data, they must be able to ask themselves, and answer, essential questions to understand its value. For example, does this data need to be kept? If so, how valuable is it? How often will it be used? Where should it be stored to allow the correct access? How long does it need to be kept for? How should it be discarded if it is not required?
Being able to accurately answer these questions will allow a business to determine the status of its data and begin discarding it appropriately.
Asking these questions will allow businesses to identify what’s known as their ROT data. Removing Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial (ROT) data is an easy way for businesses to reduce their data storage. ROT data is unessential and takes up unnecessary space in data centres. Seventy percent of a business’ data is considered to be ROT. Its discard will not impact the business but will be of huge benefit to the planet.
Many businesses, however, struggle to determine which data is ROT. Data which is essential in some departments may be totally irrelevant to other divisions. A cross-company approach is vital in this process. Discarding one department’s important data could be detrimental to the business. If all departments – from HR to finance, operations to management – work together to reduce the data, significant steps can be made to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Intelligent data management systems can aid in the process of data reduction and removal of ROT data. Investing in these systems can improve a business’ data management as it shows the data’s life cycle. It enables businesses to understand what data is needed and which are at the end of their life cycle and can be discarded, making the process seamless.
Call to action
As data continues to be produced at unprecedented speeds and our reliance on the Internet grows, it has never been more important to take action. The damage we are causing the planet moves closer to being irreversible every day. Yet, simple and minor changes can make such a huge difference. You wouldn’t keep a shirt that you outgrew two decades ago, so why keep data that is old and no longer relevant?
Of course, data remains important and it is inevitable that businesses will continue to produce it. Change will not occur overnight and we might not see clear results for many years to come, but every business should start making the appropriate changes before it is too late. Taking simple steps to make data storage and management more sustainable and environmentally friendly will enable businesses and the planet to flourish.