We often like to believe that using technology like the Internet is green, or at least greener, than more traditional media, such as newspapers and magazines. But is this really true, and how do we measure it?

It’s easy to look at a pile of old newspapers and think of all the waste, even if you are taking them to be recycled. We don’t see the damage done by the servers hosting a webpage or think much about the electricity used to power the laptop that then displays the page you are viewing.

The Future Planet area of the BBC website is at least attempting to answer some of these questions by doing their best to measure the carbon impact of each page they publish, from measuring the carbon output of the journalists involved to the environmental impact of publishing a page. You can read the article here, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does-future-planet-count-carbon, and it is highly recommend.