The Hidden Face of Digital

Every day we send email, navigate the web and store our videos, photos or music in the Cloud. We often have the impression that the whole process is trivial and nearly free of environmental impacts, but this is not at all the case.

There’s a common misconception that when putting together a marketing strategy, the most environmentally-friendly approach is to exclusively use online platforms.

Yes, you’re reading this on our website. We appreciate the irony – and we’re not implying that you should never use digital platforms for your marketing. But it’s good to set the record straight.

Have you ever sat to think about what’s involved in bringing this page to your screen? The process has probably involved a collection of networks, servers and storage units made up of real hardware and cables which consume a great deal of energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Everytime you refresh your Facebook timeline, that’s another request to a server somewhere in the world. There’s literally millions of requests every minute, each one requiring processing time – which ultimately means more equipment is required to cope with demand.

We found this recent blog post by Phil Riebel, the President of Two Sides North America very interesting. Here he talks more about the unseen impact using digital can have on the environment, from the manufacture of equipment to the infrastructure to bring it to your device.

Paper is one of the few truly sustainable products and it’s one of the most recycled products in the world, it’s reused numerous times.

At St Austell Printing Company, we’re committed to working with the environment to show that when done responsibly, printing is a clean, green industry which is inherently sustainable.

So if you’ve ever used digital over print for the sake of the environment, then it might be worth having a read: http://www.twosides.info/UK/The-Hidden-Face-of-Digital