





































       V37 N4 / 2022 

©2022 American Medical Writers Association. All rights reserved.  
ISSN 2163-5315

AMWAJournal.org     40

ABSTRACT 
There is a direct correlation between digital content and 

greenhouse gas emissions. We have an ethical obligation to 

mitigate our climate impacts when we can to prevent harm.

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to have significant 

impacts on the health and wellbeing of all humans,1 resulting 

in more intense heatwaves, higher risks of flooding and 

damaging storms, and a changing pattern of emerging 

infectious diseases.2 According to the International Panel 

on Climate Change (IPCC), human-induced warming of 

the climate system is widespread.3 However, the impacts 

will be unevenly felt with more dramatic consequences 

experienced by women, those experiencing poverty, and 

Black, Indigenous, and people of color.4-8

 Although vulnerable or marginalized populations are 

the first to experience the most severe consequences of 

climate change, none of us are immune to the long-term 

impacts. The 2022 IPCC Summary for Policymakers notes 

that “near-term actions that limit global warming to close 

to 1.5°C would substantially reduce projected losses and 

damages related to climate change in human systems and 

ecosystems.”9 With that in mind, we all have an ethical 

obligation to mitigate our climate impacts when we can.

 What does this have to do with medical writing? There 

is a direct correlation between the content that we create 

and the generation of greenhouse gas emissions. “Digital 

is physical,” says Gerry McGovern in his book, World Wide 

Waste.10 Digital communication—which are the majority 

of our communication efforts—is/has a huge climate 

impact. Every bit and byte that we create is nothing more 

than energy. Energy is quantifiable. And for the foreseeable 

future, the use of energy emits greenhouse gases, with direct 

impacts on the health of vulnerable populations. Therefore, 

we have an ethical responsibility to consider those impacts 

as we consider our content strategy, content design, and 

content governance.

UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE FOOTPRINT
In recent decades, we have been taught to focus on our 

personal climate footprint; we must make changes to our 

personal lives to influence the course of climate change. 

Although there are certainly many options for change on a 

personal level—household solar arrays, electric vehicles, 

vegan lifestyles, and abandoning air travel, to name a few—

no individual lifestyles changes have as much impact as 

those we make at work.

 A 2017 report published by CDP, the not-for-profit 

organization that runs the global disclosure system, states 

100 companies are responsible for more than half of all 

greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the industrial 

revolution 250 years ago. These organizations are responsible 

for 71% of all emissions since 1998.11 If most emissions are 

driven by corporations, then it makes sense that we have the 

most opportunity for leveraging our impact at work.

THE CARBON COST OF DATA
There is a direct correlation between energy and data. 

According to a report published by the nonprofit research 

organization the American Council for an Energy-Efficient 

Economy, each gigabyte (GB) of data requires 5.12 kWh 

of energy.12 This is a very abstract number; plugging this 

information into the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies 

calculator from the US Environmental Protection Agency 

(EPA) shows that every GB of data generates approximately 

5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.13

 Note that the EPA calculator is regularly updated to 

reflect the current emissions per kWh in the United States. 

Although the world is moving away from reliance on fossil 

fuels, progress is slow. According to the latest data from 

the US Energy Information Administration, in 2021, the 

United States generated approximately 20% of its energy 

from renewable sources.14 Even if we increase our domestic 

renewable energy production by 10% annually, we’ll still 

be relying on fossil fuels for about half of our energy in the 

United States in 2030.

Alisa Bonsignore / Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC, Phoenix, AZ

First, Do No Harm: Ethical Considerations Surrounding the  
Environmental Impact of Our Digital Content

EVERYDAY ETHICS

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AMWAJournal.org     41Ethics Surrounding the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Content

Emissions Example 1: Websites
Inbound marketing company Hubspot reports that the 

average home page weight was close to 2 MB in 2020.15  

The ninetieth percentile of webpages weigh more than 7 MB 

per page.16 In the process of research for this paper, I took 

a random sampling of hospitals, corporations, insurance 

companies, and health-focused nonprofits—literally 

the first 8 that came to mind—and ran them through the 

Pingdom calculator that measures page weight, load times, 

and performance.17 All of the home page weights were 

significantly greater than the 2.0 MB average reported by 

Hubspot.

 Anyone who uses the internet knows that the standard 

for modern webpages involves large hero images, videos, 

or carousels that largely fill the 

screen. As Tom Greenwood notes 

in his book, Sustainable Web 

Design, roughly half of the weight 

of a modern webpage is imagery.18 

Worse, that imagery tends to be 

stock art that slows download times  

and adds carbon emissions, 

without adding value to the user’s 

experience.

 This practice goes against 

the concept of plain language, 

as advocated by Balmford.19,20 

He asserts that “plain language” 

is not wholly accurate. It’s not 

simply about the choice of words 

and sentences, but rather the 

whole document, including 

language, structure, and design. 

As communicators, it is our 

responsibility to consider the best 

methods for the effective and 

clear presentation of information. 

Informative images, charts, graphs, 

and even videos can have a role 

in effective communication and 

should be considered on a case-by-

case basis.

 We can achieve our content 

goals with smaller page weights.

 At Company A, they had an 

image-intensive home page. At 4.9 

MB, it was heavier than the average 

weight reported by Hubspot, within 

the upper half of the sampled page 

weights (Figure 1). The page was loaded with stock art of 

health care providers in scrubs and masks; none of these 

images showed products or services in action, leaving the 

reader with no visual clues beyond the knowledge that the 

product was something medically focused.

 Eliminating unnecessary stock images and replacing 

others with more informative product-oriented photos cut 

the page weight by half. The result was a page that still met 

the visual criteria expected from a professional website, but 

was more informative, downloaded faster, and reduced the 

carbon emissions by half.

 The net result was a savings of nearly 17 tons of avoided 

emissions, or the equivalent of removing more than 3 

passenger cars from the road for a year (Figure 2). 

Figure 1. Sample page weights for health care 
organizations and health-focused nonprofits.

Figure 2. Reducing page weight also reduces 
greenhouse gas emissions.

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AMWAJournal.org     42Ethics Surrounding the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Content

Emissions Example 2: Comparing the Impacts of  
Video and Audio
Just like text, there are times video and audio are 

indispensable tools for walking customers through setup or 

use of a product, or for presenting educational information. 

There are also times in which video is an unnecessary, 

heavy-weight, flashy video for video’s sake—something that 

could have been explained just as clearly in text or imagery.

 The ways in which video can be used are diverse, 

which makes comparative weighting difficult. Instead, let’s 

compare audio-only podcasting with video podcasting, 

YouTube videos, or recorded presentations.

 A half-hour video recording, complete with slides and 

talking head recorded at the YouTube quality of 24 frames 

per second will end up being about 1.73 GB.21

 Podcast hosting company Blubrry estimates that the 

same information presented as a half-hour long, mono-

channel, talk-only audio podcast-style recording averages 

about 23 MB.22

 When working with audio and video, it’s important to 

decide whether a video is worth 75 times the energy and 

correlated emissions (Figure 3). Always consider video 

projects on a case-by-case basis.

Emissions Example 3: Our Meetings
Particularly since the start of the pandemic era, we’ve all 

spent a significant portion of our day on video conferences. 

But our use of Zoom, Teams, Skype, or related services  

uses bandwidth and energy, which we now know has a 

carbon cost.

 When everyone joins the meeting with video on, the 

meeting requires roughly 800-900 MB of bandwidth per 

person.23 For one month, I kept track of all of my daily 

video meetings. On average, every Zoom meeting had 5 

participants (some were one-on-one, whereas others were 

large group calls). When everyone has their video on, that 

works out to an average of 4 GB of data per call.

 That same call—the usual screen sharing, the speaker 

visible in thumbnail, but other participants in video-off 

mode—works out to be about 190 MB total on a five-

participant call. Leaving everyone’s video on for the 

duration is 20 times more energy and emissions intensive  

as a video-off meeting (Figure 4).

 Many employers believe that video-on is crucial for 

building relationships while working remotely. A good 

compromise can be to have video on for the 5 minutes of 

meet-and-greet at the start of the meeting but turning video 

off during screen sharing.

CONCLUSION
We all have an ethical responsibility to reduce carbon 

emissions to mitigate the impacts of climate change, 

particularly for those who are the most vulnerable. The 

content that we create generates measurable greenhouse 

gas emissions. Knowing that the majority of emissions come 

from corporations and not individuals, it makes sense that 

we leverage our influence on our organizations to have the 

greatest impact on the health and wellbeing of others.

Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no  
commercial associations that may pose a conflict of interest in 
relation to this article.

Author contact: hello@clarifyingcomplexideas.com

References
1.  Tennison I, Roschnik S, Ashby B, et al. Health care’s response 

to climate change: a carbon footprint assessment of the NHS in 
England. Lancet Planet Health. 2021;5(2):e84-e92.

Figure 3. The relative data and energy impact of audio versus video.

Figure 4. Video-off meetings use less data, less energy, and generate 
fewer emissions.

23 MB

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1,500

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4,500

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Video-on meetings are 21x more data and 
energy intensive

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AMWAJournal.org     43Ethics Surrounding the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Content

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RESOURCES
Pingdom website speed test  
https://tools.pingdom.com/

Video filesize calculator  
https://toolstud.io/video/filesize.php

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