How to give your online presence an ethical edge

So right now it is 2022. Since 2020 the world view for most people has changed beyond anything we could have imagined. We all know the story of the coronavirus, so we don’t need to talk about that. What we do need to discuss, is how it now affects the ongoing attitudes of consumers, employees and businesses as a whole. The new normal has brought a new rulebook to how we feel about our lives and how we want our world to work.

The new normal of what we all care about

You may have heard of “the great resignation” – a term given to the epic scale quitting of jobs that happened during coronavirus lockdowns. Huge numbers of people felt like their lives hadn’t been meaningful enough. Quitting work and a rethink of values was the main change. People left their jobs in the millions, their purpose and sense of meaning reframed by coronavirus restrictions and a realisation that there was actually more to life than working a seemingly meaningless job.

Commuting also came in for a difficult time. As laptop workers began working from home, they realised that months and years of their lives had been spent in traffic jams and eating low-quality overpriced convenience food. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the value they put on their time.

The remote work movement has changed

Remote work clearly went up, not just “working from home”. Suddenly the Zoom became understood as a worthwhile replacement for most face-to-face meetings. The world is still trying to figure out the best way to work if staff don’t actually need to be present to do their jobs. So many more people are working from places that are not home. We are seeing a move towards a results-based economy where people are getting paid for doing their jobs rather than spending time in an office. We look forward to seeing how this evolves. This will be interesting for anyone working in the digital economy…

Where is the ethical discussion going in relation to the future of servers and new tech?

The truth is that we don’t actually know how electricity consumption is going to play out in the future. Bitcoin could be good or bad for the energy industry, but right now, we really just don’t know. What we do know is that right now servers are struggling with the green agenda and we need to be on the right side of the environmental fight.

Servers are struggling with the green agenda and we need to be on the right side of the environmental fight

The server numbers we know about

Right now, in the USA alone, there are around three million data centres.That is 2% of the national power usage. Each year, a single server produces more carbon dioxide than a car. Over 10 years ago, globally, data centres were consuming the energy created from 14 coal-fired 1000 megawatt power plants. And these numbers are only going up—soon the emissions caused by servers will be on the same level as the aviation industry, so it is time to start taking some notice and consider our own impact in this area.

Source: https://www.energy.gov

It’s not all bad: we’re making better choices in 2022

Renewable energy is also on the up. Business and consumers are increasingly aware of who they want to buy from. The global public is now very aware of the negative costs of certain ways of doing business and is now more vocal about conscious business practice. Everyone on the planet now has a voice via social media and is using it.

How “Earth Day” works

Earth Day is a global climate action summit. Organisations, companies, schools, and individuals host live events, web streams, and ecologically beneficial activities in order to promote awareness and change in the fight against global warming. You can find an event either online or near you by looking at the Earth Day site. There is a convenient map to help you see what is happening on April 22 2022. It is fairly quick and easy to find something relevant to your organisation or business.

Invest In Our Planet

Eggplant Digital and “The Responsible Company”

The book "The Responsible Company" is a book about social corporate responsibility in modern times. At Eggplant Digital we are fully inspired by the fact that it is possible to run a successful company and still do things the right way by making fair and sensible choices about “who and how” in your business. They also talk about how every company, large or small, has a responsibility to try and be sustainable. Although this is almost impossible to achieve, we should try to do that at the level within our ability. As a result we decided to take immediate action on one thing that stood out for us: our servers.

How do we do this?

We decided to partner with ecologi.com in order to immediately offset the carbon footprint of our servers, which are all located in Hong Kong and Mainland China. But why ecologi.com? Well, quite simply, after months and months of in-depth research, we found they were the most transparent and thorough organisation to partner with. They also happen to be from Bristol, UK (which is incidentally very close to where I’m from) so we were actually aware of them on a local level, which was a nice touch. Last but not least, being a UK offsetting charity brings with it some very strict oversight and regulation. We’ve heard too many stories in the past of due diligence failing on environmental issues, so we wanted to be sure Eggplant Digital can stand firm with our new policy.

Ecologi.com 100% has the benefit of the planet at heart. This is clear when you examine how efficient their funding system is. It also allows us to work in real time with our contributions to show exactly what is being done at any given moment to offset the carbon from our servers.

Currently we also offset our staff Co2, so that is a flat contribution each month per person. Now, for each order that is made on our website, our shopping cart automatically orders a tree from Ecologi. Yes, we’re actually growing our own mini-forest, tree by tree in realtime! Feel free to check out the details of our policy in more depth, or drop us an email. We’re more than happy to chat with you about how to implement something like this.

It is a very rewarding process to implement and we really encourage you to do something similar if you feel that it is right for your business, or for yourself as an individual. https://ecologi.com/eggplantdigital

Can you do the same?

You can. It is very simple. There are two ways to do this. The first is to sign up with ecologi and go green by contributing with them.
If you are looking to run a global server, then consider using our high-speed Hong Kong or Mainland China based service. It now automatically has carbon offsetting included. If you want to know more about how it works, drop us a message here in the comment section and we’ll be happy to explain it.