E-marketing; the modern, speedy and efficient form of communication between marketers and consumers? Right? One would think that in an increasingly environmentally aware world, this would be a preferable form. However some do not agree; with global warming becoming increasingly apparent, just look at the snowfall in Vancouver over the christmas period, individuals are on a quest to place a carbon footprint on almost every percievable action. In some ways this is very helpful, yes, but sometimes it does go a bit far. The most common activity when online if trying to find information or do research, is to 'google', a search engine that has become such an institution its name has been entered into the English Dictionary.
According to Harvard academic and physicist; Alex Wissner-Gross, two search requests on google can produce as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle. It comes as quite a surprising figure, how can entering two words or phrases into an online format equal a physical output of such quantity. The academic puts this down to the electricity usage of the computer terminal doing the search and the data banks which hold all of the information and conduct the actual search. He claims that the fast accurate results do actually come at a cost, this cost being 7g of CO2.
However his figures have been disputed by Google, who say his claims are 'many times too high', and the actual figure is closer to 0.2g of CO2. This is far less that is for sure but it does bring a sense of reality to the situation. The majority of people use the internet, thinking it as the more environmentally friendly option when finding information, but apparently this has negative effects as well. However, this physicist does not in his report compare googling to other forms of searching such as using the Yellow Pages, looking information up in directories or using telephone directories. I am sure these would comprise of reasonable emissions as well, especially when you consider the paper needed to make directories, or the electricity needed to get through lengthy phone calls and slow automated options at the end of the line.
Despite this rather surprising figure when we consider the alternative, albeit without doing in depth research, we can see that every way of finding information incurs an environmental effect. A negative article that does not cover all posts shows us that statistics can be used in any way we like if reworded effectively. Maybe instead of stopping our google searches, we should fully turn off out computers at night, Im sure that would more than compensate!
Link to BBC News article; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7823387.stm
