Climate Check: Integrating Digital Sustainability into Higher Ed

Digital transformations continue to push the limits of our higher ed industry to levels never imagined. You can now connect to prospects at the click of a mouse. You can store every student record in a cloud-based CRM. You can increase your reach without ever reaching the limits of your grasp.

At Unibuddy, we are proud to be a huge part of the digital revolution in higher ed. But we’re also conscious of the impact our digital world has on our environment – at a time of climate crisis. As students increasingly list sustainability as a selling point when choosing where to study, it’s important for us to understand how we can improve our digital hygiene for a brighter tomorrow.

Related: The green new standard for student decision-making criteria

As part of Unibuddy Connect 2022, we asked Stuart Claw, a Digital Systems Specialist at Bournemouth University, about what exactly digital sustainability is, what cost it has to higher ed institutions, and what can be done to improve this area of concern.

The following is a guest Blog written for Unibuddy by Stuart Claw – you can also catch Stuart’s full Unibuddy Connect 2022 presentation on-demand:

As we move away from Generation Z and start to welcome Generation Alpha and Beta to university, Higher Education Institutions are learning what their audiences are expecting and high up on that agenda is solving the climate emergency. 

Environmental accountability and sustainable practices including recycling more, using leftovers, giving to and utilising charity shops, using apps like Too Good To Go, travelling sustainably or improving home insulation are becoming common practices in our current lives – but where does digital feed into the sustainability agenda? And more importantly, is there a way digital sustainability can help to save money and provide users with a more sustainable and efficient user experience?

What is Digital Sustainability and why does it matter? 

In this instance, the phrase Digital Sustainability is used to describe the act of making sure that the processes and technologies we use are working in the most sustainable way possible, by reducing carbon emissions, saving money, and providing a consistent user experience. 

To see the impact that introducing more sustainable digital practices can make, we need to understand what the current digital landscape looks like:

• The internet uses more electricity than the whole of the United Kingdom.
• According to Apple, an iPhone 14 during its lifetime will generate 65 grams of carbon.
• An email measuring 1mb in size will, during the life cycle of its use, emit 20 grams of CO2 which is the equivalent of running an old 60w lamp for 25-minutes, or if a user sends 20 emails per day for a year this creates the same carbon emissions as driving 1000km/620miles in a car.
• An average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 for every page view and over a year, a site with 100,000 page views per month emits 2,112kg (According to carbon calculator, Website Carbon) which is equal to travelling 14,465km/8988 miles by plane. This is the same as a two and quarter flights to Unibuddy in New York from London Gatwick!

Look at how you communicate

Look at the different ways you communicate with your audiences and find ways to refine this process and make it more sustainable.

For instance, starting with your shop window to your organisation, your website – is this Carbon Efficient? Could a page be made easier to load to reduce electricity use?

Some examples of things that can affect the loading speed of a page include using large images, video files, Java Scripts, Heavy website themes and templates as well as bloated web frameworks.

Based on this information, the following could be done to increase the speed of your site and improve its sustainability: 

• Make sure that compressed images are used
• Make sure that the correct image format (WebP is the best option) is being used
• Remove unneeded scripts from webpages
• Recycle things such as styles, functions, filters, and graphics where possible
• Make sure any website themes or templates are not heavy
• Do not host videos on the site, only link to video sharing sites
• Do not auto-play videos (If you must have them on the site)
• Reduce animation use
• If PDFs are used, try to have them as a small file size
• Keep usage of GIFs to a minimum
• Reduce tracking and other unnecessary scripts
• Improve the user journey so that the user can find the information they need quicker and more efficiently
• Improve page loading time by deleting outdated content
• Make sure that those web hosts that you are working with are using green energy to power their businesses and that any companies you choose to work with are also offsetting their carbon emissions in some way. You can find this out by using a hosting checker to see if they are using green energy.

A similar practical example includes the use of email in your organisation, could emails be made shorter with reduced use of imagery, could you replace e-marketing with text messaging which is a much more sustainable option? When you consider that a 50% reduction of emails with attachments would lead to a CO2 saving equivalent to 10 million cars driving in one year then you can see how such a small change can make a big difference. 

One last practical example is to look at your institution’s campus messaging and try to identify areas that could cause a sustainability issue, such as use of digital signage/digital displays.

A simple reduction in the number of hours these types of screens are on for could not only reduce the amount of carbon generated by the electricity used to power them but also save your institution money thanks to the reduction in electricity costs.

Consider process changes

Look at the processes you have internally and consider if these could be kinder to the environment. Asking questions and examining the policies you have in place is key, this could include:

• Sustainability in your product supply chains
• Refurbishing technology rather than buying new
• Donating old technology to local charities and schools rather than landfill
• Moving to an cloud-based server that is powered using green energy
• Reducing the opening hours of your IT suites
• Ensuring your Building Management system works efficiently
• Fitting buildings with a way of producing your own green energy
• Linking your onsite eateries and shops in sustainable initiatives, for example university shops and cafés could list themselves on apps such as Too Good To Go.

A good way to start the change is to champion for your institution to have digital sustainability considered in its Carbon Reduction plan. This will help digital processes to be adopted internally and can demonstrate the potential in what you are doing.

Word of mouth

Spread the word to others about the sustainability impact that can be made through digital changes and work with them to find solutions which work for them.

A key component to this step is to listen. We have all heard of sustainability and all have our own ideas as to what this means. Instead of being another source of information for them to absorb, start the conversation with a simple question, i.e. How do you think you can be more sustainable in your role? And then let the discussions proceed from there. 

Conclusion

The digital world is constantly growing and evolving and to help save our planet we need to understand that we must make changes in how we manage our virtual world to help save our physical world. Every byte/bit matters. 

Stuart Claw 2022

For more information about this topic contact sclaw@bournemouth.ac.uk