Sunday the 08/03/2009…. 334 lumps of coal!
On Sunday the 8th of March I decided to monitor my internet usage for the day. To do this I used a program called SurplusMeter. After leaving this program running on my laptop for the day, it showed me that I downloaded 334.4 Megabytes on this date alone. This figure is one that shocked me greatly as according to Jay Walker moving one Megabyte of information over the internet costs the equivalent cost of one lump of coal. Thus my usage is approximately equal to the cost of two bags of coal! This is something I find crazy as the time I spent using the internet on the day in question is not what I would consider to be long, especially as a Multimedia student!
Just think of the amount of CO2 that was produced just so I could have a few browses on the internet. To put things in perspective how much internet usage is involved and the effects I found a good article in the Telegraph titled, ‘Two Google searches ‘produce same CO2 as boiling a kettle’. I recommend having a read of the article:
Internet Usage 08/03/2009:
- 30 – 60 minutes on Facebook throughout the day
- 20 minutes checking emails – Gmail, Hotmail
- Downloaded audio files (4.6 MB)
- 60 minutes of project research (general internet browsing)
- 10 minutes of streaming YouTube videos (really brings up your internet usage!)
Overall I would say I spent a maximum of 3 hours browsing the web!
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