04-20-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

The carbon cost of our clicks

Why digital design must go circular.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

Last year at SXSW, I got on stage with a colleague from Tangent, a London-based digital design agency, to ask a simple question: What if every time you checked your phone, a visible puff of smoke rose into the air? While we can’t immediately see the environmental impact of our digital lives, it is very real.

Over the past two decades, the digital ecosystem has become society’s invisible infrastructure. More than 60% of the global population is now online. Each user generates 229 kilograms of carbon dioxide, amounting to almost 4% of average per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Most of us don’t know or even consider the hidden cost of our increasingly digitized world.

The internet may feel intangible, but it runs on physical infrastructure. Every email, text, post, video, website, and AI response is processed in a physical data center and stored in the “cloud,” which is in fact another physical data center.

The negative impacts of transportation, fashion, agriculture, and packaging are often discussed, but we rarely talk about the environmental cost of our hours online. Every time we scroll through Instagram, shop online, ask ChatGPT a question, or file away another week of emails we are expanding our digital footprints and generating shocking amounts of carbon.

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