Internet, e-mails: keep control

Being eco-responsible at home is good. Continuing your efforts in your company is even better. The use of the Internet is now unavoidable but it generates real environmental impacts. There are many effective ways to reduce them, including:

E-MAILS

To be classified as soon as they arrive, we must, for example, think about eliminating all spam from entry, not multiplying the recipients and avoiding the systematic use of the “reply to all” function. 

About attachments, they must be light and well designed (compressed files, low definition PDFs, optimized documents). Some software allows to optimize the visuals before inserting them in a presentation without visible degradation of the quality, others include a compression option such as Squoosh.app (the most complete online compression tool) or Compressor.io, which both allow to preview in real time the possible loss of image quality after compression and before downloading.

However, when possible, the best option is to use hypertext links that do not require any download. Regarding our email signatures, we chose CodeTwo to create unique signatures for each employee. Logos and visuals, in low definition, are stored in a cloud and do not require downloading. CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 is developed as part of an ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27018 certified information security management system

DOCUMENT VALIDATION

In order to validate and sign our paperless documents (contracts, invoices, etc.), we chose DocuSign, which allows us to save paper.

VIDEO CONFERENCING

We have deployed the Orange Open Videopresence video conferencing system to limit our travel and reduce our greenhouse gas.

INTERNET

It is recommended to do specific web searches using relevant “keywords” or “advanced search” and to properly justify heavy downloads (video, etc.) or sites using flash animations, energy-intensive.

Our websites are mainly hosted by OVHcloud. This data center player is very sensitive to environmental standards. Secure, greener, but also made in France, OVHcloud’s data centers rely on free cooling, which allows thanks to a liquid cooling system (with water) to lower the temperature emitted by computers. This already existing system was industrialized by OVH and implemented in 2003. The closed circuit makes it possible to improve energy efficiency without resorting to air conditioning systems, which consume a lot of energy.

In Roubaix, the heat emitted by the servers is used to heat the campus and the nursery made available to employees. OVHcloud undertakes to comply with its obligations under the relevant regulations and, in particular, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

DEMATERIALIZATION

We encourage our employees to prefer digital files to printable versions. Archiving is easy, space-saving, and of course considerably restricts the use of paper. 

CLOUD COMPUTING (INFORMATIQUE EN NUAGE)

For our communications department, which handles and stores large files, we have been using cloud computing for nearly 15 years. All our applications deployed over the last 2 years – DocuSign, TEAMS, ERP Sage X3 (management software package), YOOZ (invoice dematerialization), Kyriba (treasury software), IZYPEO (CSR software and Carbon Footprint), OCTIME (HR planning and time management software) – are also hosted through cloud computing.

The use of cloud technologies is proving to be a good green solution as it greatly reduces the need for physical resources since it is shared. Today, it is the best solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the computer sector through the concentration of resources.

By 2024, the major players in cloud computing (Google, Microsoft, etc.) are committed to contributing to the global ecology by creating data centres with sustainable methods and favouring locations where renewable energies are widely developed.

The impact that cloud computing can have on the global CO2 rate will mainly depend on how data centres are designed in the coming years, so this is an important point to monitor when choosing the cleanest players.

Discover more advice on responsible communication or digital sobriety on the ADEME website