Business & Environment: Addressing the Digital Carbon Footprint

This presentation provides an overview of the digital carbon footprint challenge within the knowledge services industry. It defines the industry and outlines the environmental challenges it faces, such as energy consumption and e-waste. The presentation highlights the increasing digital carbon footprint, referencing statistics and examples like Amazon's carbon emission increase. It then explores strategies to mitigate this challenge, including using renewable energy, minimizing electronics usage, and limiting email use. The presentation also assesses the effectiveness of these strategies and mentions how consumer awareness is driving brands like Apple and Google to adopt environment-friendly practices. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of balancing industrial growth with environmental sustainability, referencing various research and studies.

BUSINESS AND
THE NATURAL
ENVIRONMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
◦ Introduction
◦ Industry and challenge
◦ How challenge is met
◦ Assessment of how well challenge is met
◦ Conclusion

INTRODUCTION
◦ Talking with respect to knowledge service industry, it can be simply elaborated as an industry where the
main service being provided is knowledge, which helps the customer/ client to understand resolve their
queries and doubts in the particular field.
◦ There are various environmental challenges which can be faced by digital companies, some of these
challenges are- energy consumption, e-waste, disposing and recycling.
◦ This PPT will define the knowledge services industry and the challenges which have been faced within
this service sector.

INDUSTRY AND CHALLENGE
Industry:
◦Knowledge service is one of the industries which has been active
since long in a very informal way but with time has shaped into a proper
industry, called as Knowledge service. The service of this industry is to
serve the people/ company who serves others: providing them
knowledge in the areas where they are not aware of the aspects.
◦Digital knowledge service, helps and consults the people in
various digital sectors, which comprise of designing, marketing,
campaigning, and many more which adds value to the business models,
customer experiences and the internal capabilities that support its core
operations.

Contd.
Challenge:
◦ Digital carbon footprint can be simply explained as any single
individual uses the internet a minute scale of carbon is emitted, which
contributes to the greenhouse effect and eventually hampers the environment
in a very negative way. According to some research and surveys, digital
technology’s energy consumption increased by almost 70% between 2013
and 2020. Due to incline in use of electric devices and volume of data, this
has been responsible for facing the digital carbon footprint challenge.
◦ For example, the carbon emission of Amazon increased by 19% in the year
2020 whereas, the emission of global greenhouse gas emission has been
dropped due to the global pandemic, COVID-19.

HOW CHALLENGE IS MET
◦ According to a study in 2019 by the Shift project, the total digital
carbon footprint of the world collectively accounts for nearly
3.7% of all the greenhouse emissions which is somewhere
equivalent to the emission level by the aviation industry. With his
level of contribution, the total energy consumption by digital
technology has increased by almost 70% from 2017 to 2020
which is surely going to increase with the coming time and rise in
population. As this is an issue of high concern at the same time
there are various ideas and techniques which are being studied
and implemented by the researchers to reduce this carbon
footprint issue.
◦ Some of the approaches which are followed to minimize such
issues are listed below:
Use of renewable energy
Minimizing use
of electronics
Limiting use
of emails

Contd.
◦ For example, in a study of UK’s OVO Energy, they calculated that UK could possibly reduce the level of
carbon emission by over 16,433 tons and that too simply by each adult sending one less email per day.
The digital carbon footprint can be reduced by various practices and techniques, such as reducing the e-
waste: optimum utilization of resources, power down, clearing cloud space: according to a study, almost
one hundred zettabytes of data will be stored in the cloud by 2025, limit unnecessary streaming, mindful
emailing, switching to renewable energy sources.

ASSESSMENT OF HOW WELL CHALLENGE
IS MET
◦ The environmental challenge with this digital age is the
digital carbon footprint, with the implementation of
various techniques and ways the digital carbon footprint
can be reduced. The need of the strategies is to prevent the
increasing damage to the environment and control it for
the future generation of living organisms.
◦ With the changing economy, consumers are becoming
more aware of their responsibility towards sustainability
and of brands which follows environment friendly
practices. As the digital economy have been growing day
by day, this has created incline in carbon footprints due to
incline in use of energy-based devices.

Contd.
◦ For example, brands like Apple, Google, and others have also started taking such initiations to encourage
people to limit their digital carbon footprint.
◦ For Apple announced a new initiative where the company started selling tools and even repairing their
products to reduce e-waste whereas earlier apple simply uses to replace the products.

CONCLUSION
◦ The main idea of every industry is to produce a product from raw
material which can benefit individuals/ people in their work, earn
revenue, employment, contribute to the growth of the economy of
the country.
◦ With the increase in the need for humans, the area of industries has
also increased across wide areas, like product design,
communications, thermal plants, advanced agriculture,
digitalization, knowledge, and many more.

REFERENCES
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◦ Cherunilam, F., 2021. Business environment. Himalaya Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.
◦ Ciacci, A., Ivaldi, E. and Soliani, R., 2021. A Potential Business Environment of Smart Cities: A Subjective Approach.
In Strategic Outlook in Business and Finance Innovation: Multidimensional Policies for Emerging Economies. Emerald
Publishing Limited.
◦ Linderová, I. and Janeček, P., 2017. Accessible tourism for all: current state in the Czech business and non-business
environment.
◦ Perić, M., Đurkin, J. and Vitezić, V., 2018. Active event sport tourism experience: The role of the natural environment, safety
and security in event business models. International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning. 13(5). pp.758-772.

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