Simple Steps to Immediately Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: Wholegrain Digital

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One of the things that surprised me was finding out that so many organizations, their biggest footprint is their digital emissions, not their travel. So they, they are— yes, exactly. They're flying, but yet your digital missions are more. Welcome to Sustainability Solved Podcast, where our mission is to help you solve sustainability problems in your organization. If you're in business, a nonprofit, or really any organization that wants to be more sustainable, while fulfilling your purpose, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Will Richardson, Chief Innovation Officer and founder of Green Element Group, incorporating Green Element, Compaq Footprint, and of course, Sustainability Solved. And as ever, I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Charlie Luxton. Charlie, how are you today?

Good. Really good.

Really good.

The seasons are turning, but you know, that's part of life's rich tapestry. The trees are looking beautiful. And all in all, okay, despite what could be a have been a very depressing sort of few weeks with the American election. But you know, trying to trying to be positive, I think would be the it's quite the main seasonal requirement.

It's quite nice to hear you being upbeat because I'm on quite a lot of WhatsApp groups and there's an awful lot of people really are quite depressed about.

No, I think I think the next four years are going to be hugely problematic. I think Trump really doesn't get it or certainly. says he doesn't get it. I think— but I think where my sort of solace is on one level is that the Democrats were so roundly beaten on every single metric that you kind of want to look at, that the left have basically got to understand they are not selling the vision to the people.

Mm-hmm.

And actually just tinkering with it isn't going to change it. If you want to try and sell the, the kind of a— the Democrats' vision, the left-wing vision in America, You have to do it very, very differently. And I think if they just lost, they might just fiddle with the dials. Now I hope they rebuild the whole notion because it is not working.

Well, they did a lot of almost dismissing people's husbands, didn't they? They were trying to get the women's vote by going, oh yeah, those guys don't really know what they're talking about. They're a bit stupid, to be honest with you. But why don't you vote for us? Now, in reality, why would you Like, if you're married to someone, you're not gonna go, yeah, you're right, I just don't need to tell him who I vote for. You will stick and you'll be a team.

I think they lost it on many levels. I think lack of ambition. I think lack of ambition to just shoo in the same person who's been, you know, under Biden, Kamala Harris. And then, and then when she's interviewed, what would you do differently? She said nothing. It's like, well, what kind of vision? You know, people are clearly not thinking they're getting on. This is crazy. It's crazy. So Well, on one hand, I think we've got a real problem. On the other hand, maybe it's a chance for certainly Britain and Europe to step up and actually show leadership.

I think that's— I think that's it. I was listening to— I can't remember who's in charge at the EU. I'm so rubbish with names.

Uh, von der Leyen.

Yeah, actually it wasn't her, it was a guy. Anyway, what they said was very, very, I think, poignant. Why is Europe and the world waiting to hear what happens with 2,000 or 3,000 people in some marginal states in the US, and that they are in charge of our future. We need to step up in Europe and actually start to be in control of the narrative, not be controlled by the narrative in the US by those couple of thousand people. And I think They're almost— they've kind of said it themselves, the US, by voting the way they voted. I think maybe in 4 or 5 years' time they will be. They class themselves as a superpower. That's not the way a superpower works, by going against science.

Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is also in Trump's first term, he was a huge advocate for coal, and coal production tanked during his— you know, went down quite significantly during his first term because it's fundamentally just not economically viable anymore. And I think that's the bottom line is, you know, increasingly the viability of oil. I mean, let's be honest, unless oil and gas is no longer the cheapest and easiest thing to get out of the ground and burn, we've got a problem.

Yeah.

But I think increasingly it isn't the easiest and cheapest thing to get, you know, to do to create energy. And we just have to lean into technology and innovation. Yeah, that's otherwise it's like run to the hills and, you know, head to high ground because it's potentially Terrible. I had a really—

I read a really cool article written by, and it was obviously written preempting the outcome in that election. It was written by a bunch of scientists from around the world, and they were basically saying the ball— the horse has bolted from the stables. It's already running. Renewable energy is on the increase, and as you've just said, it is cheaper now. There's so much momentum that's already happening around the world that it doesn't actually matter what he does. He's basically going to marginalize the US as opposed to build on it. And that's a bit sad, but I— it was quite a nice article to read from scientists going, it kind of doesn't matter what he does. He can do whatever he wants in the US. The rest of the world will carry on doing what they're doing.

But also, as we try and cover in this podcast, businesses understand their responsibility almost better than governments and in many ways better than individuals. And they are really starting to drive these innovations. So I've been reading this book called Possible, and it's about setting out the journey to a very low or zero carbon economy. And it's a guy called Chris Goodall. He lives actually in Oxford, so about 20 miles from me. I think he's to do with the university. And he goes through all of the biggest emission sections in society and sets out the technologies and the trajectory to really dropping those to pretty much zero carbon or negative carbon. And it's really positive because 80% of emissions seem to be relatively straightforward with a bit of scalability and with a little bit of carbon cost. Relatively straightforward. 20% is a bit more sticky. That's where your carbon capture comes in. But given what has happened with Trump, given all of that, I think this is a really positive, uplifting read. And possibly the reason why I'm not so gloomy about Trump is I actually think the technology will outpace and outmuscle the madman in the White House.

Yeah, I mean, we're— although we're seeing clients that have American and large American presence offices, i.e., either they run— they are an American company in the UK, or they have a huge counterpart in the US, and they're worried. They're worried about having the drive and the momentum to be able to continue with sustainability. I was only on a call yesterday actually with a company that were We're pitching to, and they said they're worried, and they are. They're but the NHS, for example, is massively pushing for sustainability within their supply chain. And then you've got an so you've got an American company in NHS supply chain, and there is a gap, and that gap is going to increase because of the legislation and because of the drivers that are going on in the U.S. And so it'll be very interesting to see how that plays out for these companies because the The poor people in the middle are a bit like, what do I do?

Yeah, but ultimately that opens opportunities for Europe and Britain to take a lead in these areas. If America aren't pushing and the NHS is making a demand, somebody will fill the vacuum. So look, it's the worst outcome to have a lying misogynist rapist in charge of the world's biggest economy with almost no checks and balances. But I think you have to sort of understand that out of this can come some positives. Otherwise, just give up. Go back to bed.

So in this episode, we're talking to Tom and Georgie from Wholegrain Digital. What a brilliant conversation. I mean, I can't wait for the listeners to listen to this because you have so much to take away and do now.

So in this episode, we really unpack the issues around digital emissions, right from data centers through to little actions you can make with your own everyday behaviors. And I think it's a fascinating Episode. I think it has more scale in it than any other episode we've done, from the biggest organizations on the planet to literally changing the settings in your Zoom conversation. I think also what I love about it is that it shows that sustainability doesn't have to be about compromise. It can be about creativity and it can be about sort of virtual circles that by reducing carbon emissions, you can actually improve the effectiveness of your digital sort of life. And that to me is what we are missing so much in sustainability is positive conversations and actions you can take. So I would sit back, buckle up, and let's hear what Georgie and Tom from Wholegrain have got to say.

Thanks for joining us today, Tom and Georgie. We've got loads to talk about today, haven't we? I mean, loads. I mean, you— it's— where do you start? Where do you start with digital emissions?

Yeah, good question.

Usually with Tom.

Tom, do you use a computer a lot?

Is that the problem?

I am single-handedly responsible for the world's digital emissions.

Could you sketch us the scale of this issue? Because I know it is one that is growing alarmingly, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. So digital emissions are one of those things that most people don't really have any awareness that it's even a thing. You think about cars and planes and food and so on, but digital stuff tends to appear very inert. And we have terms like virtual to imply that things don't exist. And we say everything's in the cloud as if it's literally just somewhere in the sky and doesn't physically exist. But the digital sector is one of the biggest industries currently on Earth, and it consumes huge amounts of electricity. So, it's got to be on 24 hours a day. And there's basically 3 big parts of the system that are constantly consuming electricity, which is data centers, which are huge factories full of computers all over the world. You've got the telecoms networks, which are transmitting this data literally around the planet through millions of miles of cable and mobile transmitters. And then you've got the billions of devices that are connected to it, not just personal devices, but kind of industrial devices as well that are sending and receiving data. and storing data. So, all of these things are powered by electricity. They consume— if it was a country, in terms of electricity consumption, the internet would be sort of 5th or 6th biggest consumer of electricity globally. So, after the sort of big consumers like America and China and India and so on, pretty up there would be the internet. And in terms of carbon emissions, that translates to somewhere around 4% of global carbon emissions, which is more than aviation. So that gives you some context because we all have aviation in our mind as one of the most polluting industries. And yet the digital sector is more polluting and you don't really have it on our radar.

So what are the particular— I mean, breaking that down into this kind of constituent parts, what are the biggest challenges that are being faced in the data sector, the telecom sector, the digital consumption of devices sector? What are the big issues and the sticking points in that transition to a lower carbon future?

Yeah, well, I think one of the biggest things is just lack of awareness. Until literally the last few years, there's been almost no conversation in the digital sector around sustainability at all. It's sort of managed to fly under the radar. And the industry itself likes to present itself as this sort of clean, future-thinking sector that's going to solve all the world's problems. But ironically, as part of that, they don't like to talk about their own problems because that kind of spoils the image. So, I think awareness is a big part, but then on a more practical note, you've sort of got 2 pieces. You've got general inefficiency of technology, which on some level is constantly being improved because there is constant innovation in hardware and networking technology and so on to improve energy efficiency. But there's also a lot of waste, particularly on the software side where that gets gobbled up by software designers and developers who are like, oh, now we've got more powerful technology. We can waste it basically by being lazier and throwing more stuff in. And we're all familiar with the idea of feature creep, which is basically where you get a new computer, which should be way faster than the one you bought a few years ago. And it's weirdly not. And it's basically because the software has been eroding all of that benefit because— the developers can get away with it. It doesn't cost them anything to consume all the extra resources. And then the other part is just the rebound effect of the better the technology gets, the more goodies that are available to us as sort of end users, the more exciting it is, and the more we use it. So, things like streaming films at home is something that 10 years ago wasn't really feasible, but now the advances in technology mean that we can. So, So we consume a lot more just because of the rebound effect of what it allows us.

I'm very interested in— I think a really interesting one is this, is the programmer sort of laziness, if you like. It's like the disconnect between the person who rents a house out, the landlord and the tenant, isn't it? It's like there's no real benefit to the landlord in the traditional setup to improve the energy efficiency because they don't pay the bills. And you see exactly the same thing, don't you? The size of the programs just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And what are people starting to— how are they challenging that? And the only reason I'm asking that is because there's obviously a lot of issues, there's a lot of different sectors here. And so let's just start, should we just start on this one and go, well, what do we think's going to happen? And George, I'd like to get your take on this because I know your role very much is actually engaging with the clients and bringing the knowledge and the expertise of Wholegrain into the business. But Tom, What are you seeing? And Georgie, how are you getting clients to bite on that?

Yeah, so I think what we're seeing is that now that there's awareness that there is a sustainability conversation to be had in the digital sector, we're starting to see people who are in the kind of the, what you'd call the software side, whether it's web technology or other software, starting to take an interest in like what their role is. And then organizations that are either buying the technology, whether that's they're buying a website or they're just buying, you know, Google Suite or whatever it is they happen to be buying as a software, starting to ask questions about, well, what are the emissions of this software? What are the emissions of this website? And so although it's really early days in that field, I think that puts the spotlight back onto the people who are actually developing the software rather than the hardware, because it's the software that is consuming the resources on the hardware. And that's the thing that moves the needle in terms of energy consumption and so on. So that, yeah, I think that's what's sort of happening and what's changing the industry. And it is early days. There's various methodologies that have been developed for calculating energy and emissions and so on of software, but it's very early days compared to calculating emissions of other physical things that we're all familiar with. And there's huge debate in the industry about what's the best way of going about it. And there's all sorts of reasons why it's quite challenging to find consensus on that. But those processes are underway and I think we're starting to see progress.

Yeah. And from a client point of view, I suppose almost an easy into it is clients are starting to really look at their own suppliers. So, they're looking at, well, who are they hosting with, for example? And then they start to become aware of things like green hosting providers, so hosts that are running off of renewable energy. And that's fantastic. But then again, that sort of, it opens the rabbit hole, if you like, or that can of worms to sort of go, okay, well, We're hosting with a green energy provider, but when we put our website through some of the tools that are out there that Tom just referenced, so things like, I'm going to plug it because it's ours and obviously I think it's the best one, but Website Carbon Calculator. You put your website or any URL through that and you can see the amount of carbon that that web page generates. And that really does start the conversation because from a client point of view, we'll often find that There'll be someone in the organization that really gets it. And they really understand that whilst, yes, this might be seen as a small impact that you can make, it's still an impact that's very much worth doing. So, I'm down in the Southwest, you know, normally sort of submerged in some form of cold, wet, horrible water doing something silly. And it's that whole thing with the surf industry around when everyone sat back and really sort of realized the impact of what neoprene was doing to not only the planet, but also doing to communities. And it was this whole sort of wake-up call moment of going, oh God, that's not nice, is it? So I remember Tom Kay, who's the founder at Finisterre, just sort of sat there on a panel I was watching. He said, now we know, what do we do with that information? And I think that's the point that we're getting to with clients, is they're starting to realize and they're starting to know and they're starting to report this back internally to go Oof, this is a bit of a gut punch. Now we know, what can we do? And it's that sort of— they're the conversations that are really exciting at the moment and that we're starting to have more and more of because people are becoming more aware of the emissions in this space.

I think it's a really good analogy, the surfing one. I'm a keen surfer. I actually have ULEX wetsuits. Not the ULEX 1, not quite as good as the existing limestone tech, but I think ULEX 2 apparently is supposed to be amazing, really up there. But I think the analogy is really good because you have this idea that surfing is this healthy, green, clean kind of, I'm in touch with nature. And actually, you've got this toxic bomb that you're putting over your body. And I think the same thing is very much true with the digital space. It's like, oh, look, I'm not driving to a meeting. I'm doing a virtual meeting. This is super great, sustainable. It's like, uh-uh.

It is.

Not quite that simple.

It is, yeah. The journey that I went on into this space was I came from agencies that used to work in PPC and SEO and that side of things.

What does that mean? Come on, what does that mean? PPC and SEO?

So paid advertising, paid search advertising, search engine optimization, back in the heyday of like the Brighton boom, sort of '70s. I'm showing my age. 27, like 20 years ago, where the digital industry was really booming down there and we all thought we were doing great stuff. Because we're just, we're, you know, we're channeling and we're pushing this digital message and it is, it's clean and it's easy. And it did start to sort of, as you go through, you're like, well, okay, but we're selling more of this stuff.

Stuff.

That doesn't sit well with me. And then I started to find out about whole grain and that's all like made me then also think about, well, we're channeling more people through this thing to sell more stuff. And it was one of those moments of just going, oh God, oh God, what are we doing? Um, luckily enough to bump into Tom and convince him to give me a job.

But I think, I think again, another, another good analogy, this shopping thing of, look, great, don't drive to the shops, buy it on the internet and they'll drop it off, and that can be done sustainably. But actually, you just end up buying more stuff, you know, and you end up watching more stuff because it's really easy and the broadband's there now. It's a fact. It's a fascinating kind of wake-up, isn't it?

It is. It was really sobering. And don't get me wrong, I mean, We hit it hard. We moved to the middle of nowhere. We tried to go off-grid. Like, we went full in for this. But you realize that, you know, we've got 2 kids. They are gonna— they consume TV now by streaming, as Tom said. So that's, that's what they're used to. And, you know, we try and fight against it, but it's just not what— it's not what's done now. They're used to being able to get in whatever channel they want whenever they want. Likewise, people are used to be able to using digital. And what we're saying is, we know digital's not going anywhere. You know, we see new tools come through all the time. We know AI's not going anywhere, but we're sort of thinking, right, there's this thing coming. We just need to be aware. Now that we know, what are we gonna do about it and what are we gonna do with it? So, it's the thing that I always say to clients is, if you build a low-carbon website, if you're conscious of digital sustainability, You should not have to, at any point, compromise on the creative output of that site. You can still have an absolutely beautiful site. But also, because of the lens of which we're looking through that site, we're also gonna be looking to create something that's incredibly fast and quick, because that code's gonna be really lean. And we can talk a little bit more about what I mean about lean code and stuff like that, 'cause I realize I've just jumped into the—

No, no.

Techie bit of it, but. By building a site in a digital sustainable way that is lightweight, we've got something that is fast and quick. So, we've got better performance for things like search engines, because they'll easily be able to crawl the site and see what that site's about. We've got better performance around things like accessibility. So, screen readers, for example, are gonna very easily be able to see what that site's about and pass that on to the end user. And even accessibility in terms of data equality, which is, To be honest, a whole other topic that I could blabber on about for days, but making sure that people can access that site and that information in the way that they need to, wherever they might be in the world. So, be that down on the beach with your phone, and you're trying to see what the water quality is like, or be that a client that we work with in the coffee space was saying that it's really difficult for them to show their providers out in South America the end product, because the website won't load when they're out there. So, That's the way that we look at websites. It's a much more human approach to websites, but also a planetary benefit.

So would you say this is one of those virtuous circles that actually by simplifying and making a lean website, you get a lot of rub-off benefits and you don't have to make huge compromises?

100%.

I'd say you don't need to make any compromises, really. The one of the things that I found fascinating, because we followed Tom's book on a DIY place, and we followed it to the letter. And we are constantly told what a great website that we have. And that's the bit that I love telling people is actually we are completely accessible to everyone. It's very low energy use and people like the look of it. So there is no compromise. Why would you? Because I think that a lot of people do come into this going, yeah, But it'll look rubbish, won't it? It may be virtuous, but it will look rubbish. And it's all about the look, not— but actually that's not true.

Yeah, I am. I don't— Tom was there, so he would've felt my anger, but a conference that we attended a few years back and sitting there and someone on a panel about digital sustainability saying, the only way you can have a truly digitally sustainable site is to have plain HTML, no images. It's like, no, that's not the case. Because you've got to also consider, what is the purpose of that site that's up there? Why is it up there? If you've got a plain HTML page, no one's gonna be looking at that. No one's gonna be interacting with it. You've got to think of the human in all of this. So, yes, bring that— that person is coming into the internet, they're coming into this digital experience for a reason. You've got to provide them with the information to make that energy usage worthwhile in the first place, because else what is What's the point? So if you have a site that is engaging and beautiful, but it's got very strong UX and it points you through to where you need to go properly, surely that's the best site.

What is UX?

Sorry.

So user experience. Sorry, I'll come in.

No, no, no, Charlie, you're doing really well at this, at this, um, at this jargon-busting kind of—

Jargon-busting, that's my job.

Can we have a bingo card?

That's my job.

I didn't think I was too bad at it, but I've obviously been working with very technical people for too long now.

So if you can get the user experience right and focus on that, actually you don't need to throw everything at it in terms of heavy data requirements.

No. Well, there's, I mean, Tom, you can sort of talk more to image usage and things like that and more of the sort of the ins and outs of how you can reduce the weight of a website. But yeah, ultimately that's it. The big thing you've got to think about is you don't want any wasted journeys because wasted journeys on a website equals wasted energy.

So every click, every click is Is is a carbon, you know, is carbon.

Yeah.

So Tom, so what are the what are the fundamental principles then? You know, because I I've written this website carboncalculator.com was it?

Yeah. Website carbon.com.

I'm gonna yeah. I'm gonna run my company website through it. I haven't.

Can you publish the results on this podcast, Charlie?

Yes.

You've got you've got an I want to know now publicly what your website does.

Thanks thanks dude. Anyway. So Tom, let's say I'm a business owner and, you know, the very wonderful creatives come to me and they say, this is the sketch of the website, this is the beta version. What are the big things I should be looking out for? What are the alarm bells?

Yeah, so I mean, I always think, like Georgie said earlier, like always think about the humans first. So, you know, what are you actually trying to achieve? Who are you serving? And what's the objective? So it doesn't matter what it looks like, how pretty it is, how exciting you find it, like start with that question of why it is there, what it's trying to do so that you can actually assess whether it's hitting that brief at all. And then looking at things like videos are a big one. Like a lot of websites just have an autoplay video that just immediately starts playing on the homepage or even on other pages. That's a big kind of red flag is like, well, why is, why is that there? Why is that happening? Is this actually serving the purpose? Then images are another big one. Why are they there? Do they need to be that big? Do there need to be that many of them? What are they trying to communicate? And then they're the sort of 2 big things on a design front that you just sort of visually see. Fonts are another one, weirdly, that you'd probably never think of. If you've got loads of different fonts on a website, you've got to load them all. They're all files that have to be loaded. So actually just really clean, thoughtful typography. is another thing to look out for. And then there's loads of stuff on the technical side around tracking scripts for things like analytics tracking, whether your developers are using code bundles, which you probably wouldn't know by looking, but there's questions you can ask. But if they're just piling in libraries of code because they need one feature and they can't be bothered to write it themselves, and there's some library that has 28 features and they can copy and paste the whole thing, You know, these sorts of things have a big impact. So it's sort of questions you can ask and using tools like, you know, whether it's our website carbon calculator or a different tool, using tools like those to sort of hold them to account to some extent and give them a target, give them a brief, like, you know, benchmark where you are at. If you've got an old website, benchmark it before you start. Look at your competitors and benchmark them. And then, you know, set yourself some sort of goal of improvement so that Even if you don't fully understand all of the technical details because you're not the web developer or the designer, you've given that team some sort of structure around what they're trying to do.

I might my I'm dread was creeping across me when you went through that list.

But I think that's good though, and I think I think that's but isn't that good though? And I think that's the reason why I'm not when I was saying you should be open with because actually I think we need to be talking about it, and it's not a bad thing that your website is bad. That's not a bad thing.

Well, I don't know it's bad. It just sounds like it's really bad.

Charlie, what I guess, Charlie, what I'm getting at is it's if you know to fix a problem, then, and you don't fix it, and you don't fix the problem, that's the bad bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and that's what I think we should get to is it should be, we should be open and go, actually, website's rubbish right now. I'm going to do something about it.

It's kind of interesting because we start with a video and we've got loads of photos because you run architecture practices. You want to see the buildings.

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Do you have an example, like a case study of where you've worked with a company or, or an organization and you've managed to sort of turn around their digital footprint, I suppose?

So, one of our clients is the UK Green Building Council. So, it's a charity organization with over 700 members now, and their mission is basically to unite the UK building industry through sustainability. So, in terms of shared values, well, who their brand is, obviously, it makes a lot of sense for them to look into actually how their properties are built themselves, and obviously, digital was part of that. So, They came to us at Wholegrain and said, right, we're looking at a new website, but we want to be considerate of how we're building it. So brilliant. We, we went through that initial discovery phase, understood what they wanted, and then we went back to them as an agency and said, right, we're going to pixelate every single one of your images on the website. So obviously the client's face was a little bit like your face, Charlie, at this point of like, what? Why? But what you do—

Yeah, it doesn't work, does it?

Bear with, bear with. You do need to. The client was very brave. I've gotta be honest at that point of saying that back to them. They were like, okay, tell me more. It wasn't sort of shut off. But basically, as Tom mentioned, there's lots of fun stuff that you can do with imagery to bring down the file size, if you like, of each individual image. And obviously file size, each time you load that page is additional weight. So that's gonna be additional. energy required to load the page. So, we said to them, well, what if we put this application over all of your images to really bring down that file size and make them feel super, super light? And basically, if you do visit their website, so I believe it's ukgbc.org, the pixelation on the images is all more done in sort of block stages. So, actually, it's a really creative application over the top of that image, which now has become such a strong part of their brand, they've actually lifted it to offline elements as well. So, it actually becomes part of their signage and things like that. And what it gives the, like, the clever use of creativity there actually gives the whole site much more of an identity rather than just using stock imagery throughout of UK building industry, which, don't get me wrong, is, I'm surrounded by engineers in my family, so I'm very used to it. But stock imagery, after a while, sites can tend to look the same. So, not only did that solution provide them with a much lower carbon solution, but also it gave them that true creative identity, which is really beautiful. So, that's one small part of it. Obviously, the rest of the site, we really looked at how we were building the site out. So, as Tom mentioned, what font libraries we're using, which fonts we're using, colorways, bits like that. So, applications throughout the site. And what it meant is when we launched the site around this time last year, We actually reduced the carbon emissions from the site by 94%.

Whoa, that's a lot.

Wow.

It's a good one.

It is a good one.

So that was at point of launch. And it is worth noting that obviously a website, as you guys know, you can't just sort of launch a website and go, that's it, it's always going to be that level, because these websites are managed and used day in, day out. So new campaigns might be launched. I know the guys are currently launching something around COP. with a resilience roadmap. You know, there's more sort of research and data that's put in so that this— websites are a constantly evolving thing. So we do work with them on an ongoing basis whereby we're constantly reviewing the outputs of their website. So we're making sure that they do keep at that lower carbon level, that the performance is still there, that from an accessibility point, they're still there. So at the moment, we're doing a bit of work around performance because there's been some creep in some areas. And it's things like that that actually sort of go, you know, we've got the flat, we've let it out, we've made sure that it's incredibly energy efficient, but we're going to keep coming back to maintain it as well to make sure that ongoing it still gives you as a client what you need. So that's a really, really exciting one. We've got other clients as well with that ongoing basis who now report on their digital emissions at board level. So Good Energy, for example, take their carbon emissions each month into board level. They've just used it as part of their B Corp certification, which was successful. So, you know, as we said, people are really starting to wake up to it now and see the importance of it within their scope emissions.

And I would hazard a guess that the accessibility functionality will help charities as well with raising money.

Yeah, 100%. Exactly. When you look at it, I believe it's something staggering, like 1 in 7 people can't access websites in, in the way that they're built in the UK. So by making sure that we're accessible to all, that can only be a good thing, and it's the right thing to do, and it's the fair thing to do. And I think that's, again, it comes back to that humanity piece.

And the other thing to think about it is, we are all, we've all had a disability or have a disability at some points in our life, because it's like breaking your arm, breaking your leg. And I remember reading that and going, wow, okay, it actually does. You, you've become so blinkered and go, it's a very small part of society, but actually it's a— it is society, full stop.

Yeah.

It's a really interesting one though, isn't it? Because what benefit to UK Green Building Council is there of reducing their carbon emissions of their website? Because they don't pay for the power that runs— I mean, there's a bit of hosting set. I mean, what's this? And I understand that there's a much bigger communication piece in playing your part in transition, 100%, and there's a lot of messaging around that, and it's the right thing to do. What's the financial sense? Is there any financial benefit?

So from a financial point of view, obviously you have got a lighter site. So yeah, from a hosting point of view, your hosting costs will be lower than if they were if you had a real energy-guzzling site, because you're not— you won't have to pay for that additional energy. a hosting point. You've also got, one of the things that I absolutely love about how we build sites is, you know, we're probably like the worst salesman out there because we build everything very open source so that things can be really future-focused as well. We focus on WordPress for our websites. And by doing that, it allows for constant evolution. It's not so, Charlie, when you're talking about your website and going, oh God, we've got a an image that, like, loads of images, and we've got a video that loads. I think the important thing about digital sustainability isn't that you have to go, right, that site's rubbish, we're just gonna get rid of that. No, you can, like, we don't want to encourage loads more sites coming onto the website in the wrong way. It's almost that, like, the recycling element. It's like, you know, you've got this now, but what can you do with those low-hanging fruit to actually make the site that you've currently got perform better in a more digitally sustainable way. And then sort of at the point when you are ready to potentially build a new website or look into that, then how can you consider it at that stage? So that's the thing. It isn't the sort of pointing the finger and go, you must do this now. No, there's loads you can do to sites that might not be originally built in this way, but you can sort of rework around.

Yeah. And just to jump in there. I mentioned earlier about developers just throwing in libraries of code and things like this, and that can seem quick and easy in the short term. But then, because websites do last, hopefully, for many years, they have to be maintained. And actually, the more gumpf you've got in there that nobody really knows what it does and it's interfering with other things, the harder that maintenance becomes. So there is a longer-term play in terms of the financial benefit. of actually having something that's really lean and well-organized and everybody knows, like, this is what it does and this is how it does it, to be able to maintain that long-term and actually keep it running efficiently and operating well.

In a business, in a digitally based business, what percentage of their emissions would be from internet-based or digital-based transactions?

I mean, it's really hard to say if I'm being completely honest. Because nearly all of the digital emissions are going to fall into Scope 3.

Scope 3 emissions are the greenhouse gases that come from things a company does not directly control, like when people use their products or when they buy materials from other companies. Think of it like extra mess that happens after a party. Even if you didn't make it yourself, it's still a part of what happens.

And it depends on what that business is doing. So if they're an e-commerce business, for example, The digital aspect is no doubt going to be significant and worth them paying attention to. But equally, I would imagine it's the shipping of those products. And potentially, if they're going to include it, the actual impact of the products they're selling. It depends how far you go with that. Will would have a better sense of this than me.

I was going to jump in here. One of the things that surprised me was finding out that so many organizations, their biggest footprint is their digital emissions, not their travel. So they are—

What?

Yes, exactly. They're flying, but yet your digital emissions are more. Yeah, that really surprised me. By the way, Charlie, your site is cleaner than 77% of all pages globally. Well done.

There we go.

Well done, Charlie.

I'm going to look at those videos. And I was feeling really bad because we just won a Low Carbon Innovation Award from the UK Green Building Council and Building Magazine last week. It's like, whoa, we've all got blind spots.

You're okay. You're okay.

I'm going to do— I'm going to go and have a go though. I'm going to have a go. I'm going to try and do some rinsing and see what we can do. So that's— I feel like we've discussed like the website. So either side of that, you've got big areas of consumption, haven't you? You've got the equipment that is being manufactured to view this stuff on, and you've got the data centers and the sort of telecoms networks. Should we start with data centers, telecom networks? What's going on there? What's exciting? Because to me, that seems like something we can crack, right? Because my understanding is the big problem, there's a lot of cooling that goes on with it, and there's obviously a lot of basic data. But if you put that in cold places and near renewable energy sources, you can kind of start to tackle those relatively easily. Or am I living in a dream world?

It's a bit of both. I think on the surface that it's sort of relatively easy, exactly as you said, to, um, you can build more efficient data centers. The bigger hyperscale data centers are a lot more energy efficient than like small ones, which literally could be a room at the back of some office building somewhere. So, having highly optimized purpose-built, purpose-designed data centers makes them much more energy efficient. And then locating them in places where you, yes, it's relatively cool climate in terms of cooling, but also you've got decent supplies of renewable energy. You've got to think about what the power grids are like in the locations where you're building these things. So, on paper, there's really tangible things that you can do to make that easier. The flip side, on the other hand, is that the most efficient data centers in terms of energy are the highest consumers of freshwater because they're using water for cooling. So, there's real sort of trade-offs that you've got to think about in terms of you solve one problem, you create another, and there's big issues with data centers being built in like water-stressed areas because, you know, it made sense from a power point of view, but it doesn't necessarily make sense in terms of the actual water demands you're putting on the local area. Yeah.

So what, so the water's taken from aquifers or from nearby rivers, run through the thing to cool it, and then put back in the river, or how does that work?

Yeah, well, I mean, they're taking it from mains water supplies essentially. So they'll do deals with municipalities to pull water from the water grid essentially, and then put it back into the same system that, you know, all the water goes back into. So, and that'll be different.

Down the sewer, basically.

Well, essentially, yeah. I mean, they might go back into a river. It depends on where they've built the data center and where that water is going. But the point is they're pulling it from the mains water supply.

I would imagine another problem that we have is the legal aspects of it, because I know that when we were looking at our legal structure and where we, what software we had and everything, our lawyers were looking at our data center, like where our data was being held for our software, and we had to have it in the UK.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And especially after Brexit, you know, that means that from a data sovereignty point of view, you know, you've got people's personal information that you're storing in all of your cloud software. You need to make sure that That data isn't being sent to America or wherever it might be sent. Yeah.

But there are some positives. I'm going to come in as the positive fairy. There are some sort of real positive moves that are happening. So there's a fantastic company called Deep Green and they're currently working— Tom, you'll probably be able to explain a little bit better how— I don't want to do down the amazing work that they're doing, but they're basically working with local councils to put data centers in community swimming pools.

Yeah.

So using the water from the pools to cool their machine to like quite— so I think it's something like year on year, they're saving those properties about £80,000 worth in terms of energy fuel by heating. So people are starting to be clever about how they do it. As Tom mentioned though, that is on the small scale. So it's these big scale ones which are— I mean, the scale of them are just eye-watering.

I remember auditing Edge Hill University years ago. I mean, we're talking about 8 years ago, plus 10 years ago. And they were like, oh, we don't really do much. They had a head of IT that very pragmatically went, oh, look, our data center is almost next door to the swimming pool. So why don't I heat up the swimming pool? And he went to the board and went, do you mind if I link the two together? Because it solves my problem and it solves your problem. And he did that. And they— no one actually knew what was going on. And so Yes, but actually, how many universities have we got in the UK? And how many swimming pools do we have? So it actually could— that joined-up thinking is brilliant. I'm so glad to hear a company is actually going through that.

Yeah.

And so we were chatting with Matt over there and he was saying, swimming pools are one thing, that's great, but also think about laundries for hospitals, things like that. How could we help there? Think about putting that energy into growing salad crops and things like that in the UK. So there's So much exciting stuff, which is, is, I think the thing with like digital sustainability is it can feel quite heavy at times. You do think, oh God, but there are some fantastic people who are driving through with really exciting things, which will hopefully just become the norm as we move forwards.

And, and how much of a, a difference does it make if you seek out a hosting or a provider that, that has got green energy? I mean, that's totally possible now, I assume.

Yeah, there are lots of very, very good providers who are out there. And it's almost like, I think, Tom, you always say it's like almost making sure that from a pension point of view, you're going with a green pension provider or you're using renewable energy at home. It should be a no-brainer. There's no compromise in the client service that you'll get from them. Yeah, they're very safe, secure, and good providers.

Yeah, and it's a really, it's a low-hanging fruit because essentially Hosting providers, you've got to pick one, and it's relatively easy to move a website or an app from one hosting provider to another. And some of them have pretty strong sustainability commitments and some of them have none at all. And it doesn't mean that the ones with a strong sustainability commitment are perfect, but they're trying and they're hopefully being reasonably transparent about it. So that is a low-hanging fruit in terms of just saying, well, we're going to go with the people who seem credible, like they're trying to do their You know, the best they can, rather than the people who aren't even talking about it.

So this is another toe-curling experience. I have absolutely no idea who our website provider is.

That's just pretty normal.

That's the first question I'm going to ask when I get out of here.

What I'd like to know is, because we all have either used a Google system or a Microsoft system, or like, That must be a large part of this conversation. What are they doing? What is happening in that space?

Yeah, so the big tech companies, I mean, they stayed silent for a long time. And then a number of years back, there was a big campaign from Greenpeace called Click Clean, where they basically kind of blew the whistle on how much energy these big tech companies were consuming. And since then, it's sort of really created a shift where these big tech companies have started talking about it a lot more. Google set very ambitious targets of using 100% renewable energy by, I think it was like 2020 or something.

Have they met it?

Well, they met it. And then 2 things happened. One, once they met it, they then admitted what that meant, which is like you get into the minefield of what does it mean to use 100% renewable energy? And actually, they're buying renewable energy credits to match 100% of their energy consumption. So, they met that. But then they actually said, well, okay, but that's not really literally the energy that's going into the data centers. So then they said that they're going to start looking at how they can use real-time renewable energy on the local grid. And they haven't achieved that, but they're doing interesting experiments in terms of trying to optimize the data center power consumption in terms of its processing cycles and the cooling cycles and things. using predictions of what renewable energy is going to be available on the local grid based on weather patterns for wind and so on. So, those sorts of things are really interesting and actually really cutting edge, which is super exciting. But then the other thing that's happened in the meantime since then is the whole AI boom, where basically these big tech companies have essentially just thrown out their sustainability commitments in order to try and win the AI race and throw everything at it in terms of processing power. And there's there's generally a belief that it's a winner-takes-all game. Whoever achieves the best AI will essentially capture the whole market. And in order to have the best AI, you need the most computing power. So, whoever can build the most computing power and scale it as quickly as possible is going to win. So, they're now building data centers at an insane pace and openly admitting that this is throwing their sustainability targets out of the window. Most of the big tech companies are talking about building their own mini nuclear power stations in order to provide the power because the grids globally just don't have enough power to scale at the rate they're scaling these data centers now. So, I think it was going pretty well. I'd say it was going pretty well until the whole AI—

But also, that's interesting. I mean, the AI thing It's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, that's a huge explosion of demand of energy, isn't it?

I think that there's quite an interesting thing with these new technologies that will come through is actually the thing that I worry for future generations is when everyone sort of wakes up and understands this impact is the amount of guilt that's going to be felt by these people who honestly didn't have a clue that just by consuming things in this way, which is almost forced upon them and pushed upon them, Like, I mean, I hate to say, I had to go on Amazon the other day because I live in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes you've got to do it. But now there's an AI widget on there that sort of tells me what other customers think of this thing. I was like, well, I could just scroll down to that. Like, where do I choose whether I want that or not? And there's, I think there's a real sort of, the consumer's been missed in all of this to sort of go, does the consumer want that additional, as we were saying, like the functionality scope? Creep. Do we need this? Do we want this? Is this actually beneficial to us, or is this just egos racing for the win?

Because it's everywhere now, isn't it? The AI button pops up and tells you things, and you're like, "Wait a second." What was wrong?

Just bought a toothbrush with AI. What's that about?

So we've done like what you can do on your website, what we're doing behind the scenes. So then I think the big one to cover on is the kit, like the tech. Like we're all sat here. surrounded by bits of kit, microphones, and headphones, and computers, and monitors, and network switches. And that's a big thing, right? It's a big element of spend in a company. We're constantly buying new kit in our architecture practice and churning. So, what should people think about when they're buying kit, basically? Or disposing of kit, I suppose, is the other one. It's actually probably that.

Well, it's both, isn't it? Disposing and buying kit are interrelated. And I think that's one of the big things is about actually thinking about, like, If you're buying kit, it's probably in many cases because you're getting rid of kit. So why are you getting rid of it? Could you have repaired it and extended its life? And often the answer is yes. It's just, it's kind of easier often to just buy new ones and get rid of the old ones. So actually making an effort to get things repaired, probably having a relationship with a company that refurbishes your devices for you and maintains them well is probably a good thing. But then actively buying refurbished gear as well. I mean, companies like Back Market, for example, which is now like become pretty mainstream, they sell you devices that are as good as new, but they're not new. So, I think a bit like we're seeing with the whole vintage clothing market is becoming popular, I think the same thing is starting to happen and hopefully will continue to happen more with electronic devices, both for personal use and for commercial use. But then I also think just looking at things like energy ratings, if it is like computers and things, for what you're buying, but also looking at the repairability. Like, are things designed to be repaired or are they designed so that you can't? And, you know, it's not always easy to figure out, but some companies make more of a point of it than others.

And what about disposal? Because I have a— we have drawers of shame that we just don't know what to do with this stuff. Do you know what I mean? What do I do with it?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a few things you can do. If you think they're actually half decent, reason, just take them to your local IT shop and they'll repair them. And often they'll take them off your hands and they'll resell them for you. There are lots of charities as well who will take off your hands all of your old devices and they refurbish them and then they give them to schools and people who maybe can't afford to buy a laptop or a phone or so on and they refurbish them, wipe them for security and so on. So, There's people who will take like decent devices off your hands and then, and then if you really do, you know, if they really do fail, then, then you have to talk to like an electronic waste disposal service.

I think I'm just going to try and wrap things up. And I think what would be great from both of you is what, what are the key takeaways that our listeners can do on the back of this episode? What are the, you know, what are the first steps that organizations can do to reduce digital emissions?

So for me, it's about coming away from this feeling really empowered to know that you can easily make a difference sort of starting straight out. So we've produced a toolkit called the Digital Declutter Toolkit in collaboration with a lot of other fantastic parties in the industry. And going through there will just give you some real key pointers as to what you can, what changes you can make day in, day out. Be it putting a blur on the back of your Teams call or your Google Meet or things like that, because that again reduces the energy in terms of— it's little really fun things.

But why are you telling me now? I've just sat here with all of this.

It's other things like using dark mode. Like, there are real things that you as an individual can be really empowered to do, as well as taking that to organizational level. and talking to the organization about what changes they can make. So that's my big takeaway for everyone. Brilliant.

And you've worked with Business Declares on some of this stuff as well, haven't you?

Yes.

Another organization I help out at.

Yeah, Business Declares have been great in kind of championing that. They were the ones who approached us and said, hey, can we work together and put together this toolkit so that businesses have a starting point? You know, it's not an endpoint because there's like, you can go down rabbit holes in any direction with the kind of digital stuff, but Just give you somewhere to start so that you can find what's relevant to you.

And we're currently working with a fantastic organization, so a youth-led organization called Earth Minutes as well, just to refresh that and to help empower young people really feel like they can make decisions around their digital uses with like the full picture in mind as well. So that's been really exciting.

Great, great. Well, thank you both for coming on today. It's been an absolute pleasure listening to your extensive knowledge on digital emissions.

I don't think I've sat through a podcast and had a bigger to-do list.

Well, I apologize for that.

No, no, no, no, it's great. You know, I've literally got a to-do list that I've got to go and do now.

Thank you.

That was interesting, wasn't it?

That was fantastic. I tell you what I really liked about it was the empowerment of it. That A, here's an issue you probably don't think is an issue, but B, here's an issue that you can do something about relatively straightforward. Certainly as someone who has a business, has websites, has servers, has all that kit, It's like, actually, Christ, yeah, we've really got to think about that.

Yeah, it's so important. It's so important. And I think that was why I was so surprised when I found that digital emissions can be one of your larger emissions depending on the business.

And it's also just the— I mean, there's this creep thing is really interesting, you know, because— and the software sort of binds you into it. So we run BIM software, so big building information modeling systems, and that's gone onto the web so that people can work on them together. And it basically killed our broadband because it was too much. Oh, wow. So we know that we're chewing quite a lot of data to run these big models. The upside of it is that the models are so much more accurate and efficient that we do them quicker and there's less mistakes. And mistakes on building sites are very expensive from a carbon perspective. So, you know, it's not clean-cut. It's a really complex area. But I think the fact that the daylight is starting to be sort of shined on it Hopefully we'll get people working towards the solutions which do seem achievable. Yeah, good.

Well, I mean, Wholegrain are brilliant. They're a great company and they've done a lot of good stuff in this space. And Tom, I mean, Tom's got a Substack blog that he writes that he didn't talk about, but it's really, really good. And he's just very, very articulate, intelligent, and also a brilliant person.

So we'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, the Substack blog. Yeah, I'm saying that like I know what that means. What is a Substack? I know what a blog is.

What's Substack?

So it's a new thing that people are starting to use. I don't really know. I think— do you remember the old— do you remember the old Blogger websites?

Yeah.

And I think there was a Blogger— I think literally blogger.com was a Blogger website. It's something similar to that. And then you also had— they, they seem to be popping up and they're on trend for a bit, and then So it's the content.

Got it.

It's the content that you want to go for rather than the actual— Brilliant.

I love the fact we're just being totally honest about how completely untech savvy we are. And I imagine it's refreshing because I imagine most people are wandering around going, I don't really understand what half this stuff means anymore. Right, that's it for this episode.

We've got a number of call to actions. Definitely come along to the Sustainability Solved Hub because that will really help you drill down into what it is that you need to do to reduce your emissions. But we are also looking for a sponsor for the show. And if you know anyone or are an organization that are wanting to reach thousands and thousands of people on a monthly basis, then do get in contact with us because we really want to help this show get better and better. And leave a comment, rate the show, Share this show with your network. This is really, really important. This is how we've grown so organically, and people do listen, and people listen in droves.

Join the party and get in touch. Let us know your thoughts and any questions and actually issues that you're struggling with. Is there something you're like, why don't I get those guys to go and find some stuff out and then they'll tell me about it?

That's cool.

We're here to help. Yes, please get in touch.

That's a really good point. I love that, Charlie. Brilliant. And of course, podcast@sustainabilitysolve.org is how you get in contact with us.

And next time is actually an interview I'm super excited about because it's basically one of my favourite organisations anywhere in the world. It is the Wine Society, which is the oldest wine society in the world, I think like 1874, something like that, completely owned by the members. And they sell amazing wine and they support a lot of sustainability initiatives. So I'm like super buzzing for next month's episode.

Yeah, so am I. So am I. Are you a member?

Yep.

So am I.

Yeah.

How cool is that?

Love it.