Building greener digital platforms

ABOUT THE TALK

The internet has a larger carbon footprint than the aviation industry and the numbers are rising rapidly. With 4.5 billion people making trillions of online interactions every minute, this is hardly a surprise. That said, when it comes to a digital carbon footprint of an average organisation - their digital carbon emissions will be relatively small compared to their overall company emissions. So why should a company focus on decarbonising their digital infrastructure, platforms and operations? This talk will focus on the core benefits of low-carbon digital business solutions and greener digital platforms, discuss some of the tools for measuring digital carbon footprint, and explore the skills company employees need to accelerate digital carbon reduction.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

James is a digital leader and a passionate advocate for digital environmental sustainability in advertising, tech and digital sectors.   In 2019, James took MMT Digital carbon negative, which is when he has developed a set of highly effective carbon footprint modelling tools. Through his low-carbon website “The Green Pages”, developed with the BIMA Sustainability Council, James also supports organisations that work on reducing digital carbon emissions via workshops, courses and talks.   Led by James, in 2020 MSQ became one of the first international marketing groups to become carbon negative, and recently pledged to halve their carbon footprint by 2024, with Science Based Targets set to take the company even further by 2030.   Further to that, James created a variety of carbon offsetting schemes, including those that help prevent deforestation, investments into renewable energy, as well as ethical programmes such as low emission cooking stoves in developing countries.