- Our data hoarding habits seem
to be contributing to climate change.
In 2020, one study predicted
that over the course of the year 6.4 million tons
of CO2 would be released into the atmosphere due
to dark data, which is the data we store but don't use.
Dark data can be anything from old emails
and front door surveillance footage,
to social media posts and cloud storage.
Storing all this data consumes massive amounts of energy
and generates a lot of heat.
It also requires data centers
to have around-the-clock cooling,
which also consumes significant amounts of energy.
While some large data centers have made the shift
to renewable or lower emissions energy sources,
a large number still rely on fossil fuels.
To give you a concept
of how much 6.4 million tons of CO2 is,
it's the same amount of CO2 an average car would emit
if it drove 575,000 times around the earth.
This makes me wonder, what types of data
in our everyday life are being stored without us knowing
and contributing to greenhouse gases?
In this episode of "Act Now," sponsored by Samsung Memory,
I'm gonna go through five data points
in our everyday life that contribute to dark data
and also offer ways we
could improve our digital hoarding habits,
because cleaning up our data is not only good
for the environment but also good
for our privacy and security.
(lively music)
Social media posts,
the first data point to explore is your social media.
All your old threads, pics and rants are being stored
somewhere on a data farm.
That's right, consuming energy and releasing heat.
For example, one popular social media network
reportedly generated four petabytes
of data every day in 2020.
That's four million gigabytes a day.
Additionally, every post that comes
with a geolocation tag takes up more memory and energy.
What's the solution?
Just delete your old post every so often.
It's rare that you'll be going down memory lane
and chances are you also have
that same photo stored elsewhere on your phone,
cloud or external hard drive.
You might also be saving yourself from embarrassment
by deleting old posts that no longer represent who you are.
And you can do this manually
but there are services that basically nuke your timeline
and delete old posts every so often.
There are also services that delete your social media posts
that are older than, say, maybe a year or even 30 days.
Just do a quick internet search
and you'll find these services.
You can also turn off your geolocation
and other kinds of metadata that travels
with your post by going into your settings.
And if you're someone who's
already closed any of your social media accounts,
be sure to ask for all of your data
to be removed to free up server space.
The Internet of Things,
that smart speaker, light bulb
and coffee maker you have are all burning
through massive amounts of energy
as they communicate with each other
and send significant amounts of data through the air.
It's estimated by the International Data Corporation
that the Internet of Things will contribute
to a global data consumption increase
to 175 zettabytes by 2025.
Are you equally dumbfounded by the word zettabytes as I am?
As you might've guessed, it's a lot.
A zettabyte is equal to about one trillion gigabytes.
One estimate suggests it would take 7.5 million acres
of forest to observe the amount of CO2 generated
by 175 zettabytes.
That's a little over 500 times the size of Manhattan.
Now, I'm not telling you to throw out your devices,
but you can reduce your IOT carbon footprint
by managing the dark data these devices store.
You can go into your settings
and delete old logs of requests and information.
Smart assistants can record
and store every word you tell them,
like all the times you've asked your smart assistant
for the weather, measuring conversions,
or random facts like, what is a zettabyte?
So it's good practice to go back
and clean up those logs every so often.
Photos on the cloud,
you know all those blurry or burst duplicates
of the same photo you have stored on the cloud?
They are making an impact on the environment.
Again, it's just unused data
that is burning through energy on a server somewhere.
Here's an example.
I take a lot of photos and videos when I go on trips
or even just press events.
In 2019, prepandemic,
I averaged around 100 gigabytes of stored photos
and video in the cloud a year.
Now, according to an estimate,
that would equate to roughly 0.2 tons of CO2 emissions.
That's approximately 456 miles driven by an average car.
I can technically drive from New York City to Quebec.
And yes, the size of one photo is very small
and consumes very little energy
but collectively, think about how many photos we take,
then multiply that times how many people have a smartphone,
and then access to the cloud.
So why not delete duplicates, blurry photos,
and outdated memes that are stored on your cloud?
There are a lot of services online that will do it for you.
You'll save energy and also free
up some space for new memories.
Spreadsheets and text documents,
similar to holding on to old photos,
holding on to old cloud documents,
spreadsheets, and duplicate versions
of the same document take up space on the server.
Again, individually, these are all small file sizes,
but collectively, they have an impact.
Think about that one folder that has been
on your work server or personal cloud account
that you don't even know what's inside.
There are a lot of those we keep around.
But again, the solution is simple. Just delete them.
I mean, unless they are important tax documents.
And finally, we have surveillance video.
Not only do cameras waste a lot of energy
because they're always on,
but they also store a lot of data on the cloud,
anywhere between 18 gigabytes a month
at the lowest resolution
and 140 gigabytes at the highest resolution.
This includes private surveillance video
from cameras we place next to our doorbells
or inside our homes to keep tabs
on our pets, children, and belongings.
You can reduce the amount of dark data your camera stores
by lowering the bit rate at which your camera records.
You could also check your storage and delete old footage.
So what's the moral of the story? Delete old stuff.
Much like you would get rid of things taking up space
around your home or donate old clothes in your closet,
it's just good practice and it could go some way
towards protecting your digital privacy as well.
Ultimately, the problem lies with big organizations
and how they handle their data.
Just like us, they need to practice sustainable habits
like implementing data lifecycle managing policies,
investing in clean energy sources,
buying carbon offsets, or even archiving data
on external storage that doesn't consume any power.
To be fair, some of the major tech companies are
already taking initiative
and implementing greener solutions,
but more effort definitely needs to be done in the industry.
At the end of the day,
just remember, having a lower data footprint equates
to also having a lower carbon footprint.
We'd like to thank Samsung Memory
for sponsoring this video.
Samsung Memory is creating low-powered memory chips
and SSDs that lower data center heat,
so the planet doesn't have
to combat climate change on its own.
Click the link below to learn more.