Checklist to reduce online carbon footprint.

Hi there!

I'm so happy someone opened a group discussion on this topic.
I firmy believe that climate change will hit future generations and societies so hard that we need to have open, fact-based and "doer" conversations on it.

TL;DR - If you're interested in this topic, we wrote an entire checklist on how to reduce your individual carbon footprint online (with sources) : https://www.tabby.us/blog/reduce-carbon-footprint

Instead of just sharing the article, I think it's more interesting to share our approach on "Digital Sobriety" (part 2) with you.

For the sake of this post, I'm narrowing down the problem to the carbon emissions of the internet (4% of CO2 emissions globally today, 8% in 2025), of which 44% to the fabrication of hardware (part 1) and 56% is due to online activity (part 2).

Part 1 - HARDWARE, THE WAY TO GO
Unfortunately, improving the lifetime of our hardware is the single best lever of action.

• Then, if you really need to buy one, buy a reconditionned item.
• Then, if you break your hardware, fix the parts (hello fair phone: https://www.fairphone.com/en/). When I say this, I take into account the carbon emissions induced by transportation from plants to your home.

I'll probably write more on hardware later.

Part 2 - ONLINE ACTIVITY

Let's go back to 'Digital Sobriety".

26% of Internet CO2 emissions are related to the electricity needed to run our hardware, ie. 4% * 0.26 = 1.04% of GES globally.

When building tabby.us, we also thought about reducing the electricity needed to run our browser. Since Chrome is the leading browser (70% of queries captured) and the most energy consuming, one active tab represents a lot energy. We scaled the approach and tabby is available all the major browsers (except Safari).

Since our user segment are "too many tabs syndrome" users (> 20 tabs open on the browser on a given time), tabby removes those tabs automatically and silently. This means 2 things:

1. less "relevant" tabs are removed from the interface, so they consume less electricity
2. since they are removed, the RAM is decluterred meaning that the overall operating system of your computer is using less electricity to run.

So basically, this lightweight AI-based browsing assistant helps users reduce their online carbone footprint without changing their browsing behaviour:

1. it removes less relevant tabs -> less electricity consumed & more focus online
2. fewer than 10% of tabs removed are restored -> the AI is accurate
3. a faster computer overall -> less demanding for the CPU, hence longer battery life and better productivity.

Thanks for reading!

Website: https://www.tabby.us/