Apparently Streaming is bad.

For over a year now I have been on a journey of living more sustainable. I’ve been working on decluttering my house and slowly becoming a minimalist. Ironically while watching YouTube I saw this video where it talks about how streaming anything is bad for the environment. Listening to this video I was confused about how this could be bad for the environment since I wasn’t physically doing anything or buying the physical object.

One of the main reasons why I only have the internet is so I don’t have to buy physical movies and can just listen to the album online. This way I’m not cluttering up my home. In a physical sense yes, in a way this is better but streaming still affects the environment. The real question is how?

In today's society we are so caught up on Netflix and Chill and trying to save some money on nights out at the theatre but how much is that really saving on the environment. You're essentially taking one carbon footprint and putting it somewhere else. In some theory, it helps but at what cost?

Streaming videos account for most of the world’s internet traffic, roughly 60%. Even down to streaming music has unintended environmental consequences.

‘In 2018, online video traffic was responsible for more than 300 million tons of CO2, equivalent to what a country the size of Spain releases in a year — for all sectors combined.’ – Eco Watch

When streaming things, it gets put in a temp folder on your internet and is erased when stuff is needed. Streaming videos and music don’t get saved on your hard drive, but it remains on the internet’s web server.

Maybe that's the problem. How does any of this have to do with anything? Well, anytime we pick up our smartphones or log in to our computers, for one theses thing do require electricity to which uses fossil fuels, and this produces carbon dioxide and contribute to heat-trapping greenhouse gasses.

Each activity that you do on each of these devices online comes with another price of more carbon dioxide since the energy it needs to run these programs and power the wireless networks that are being used. Think about the data centres that need to be able to keep up with the demand in order to support the internet and content we access.

By now over half of the world’s population uses the internet after a while of this adds up to the greenhouse gases. By the year 2025, it is predicted to double in numbers.

One way to become more sustainable with our electronics is even though that our resources are actually limited, and this is a global issue so it would require the whole population being able to be powered by renewable energy. But this goal is kind of a long shot in such a short time, which means in the meantime slowing down on the internet usage.

Even with streaming and surfing the internet is bad for the environment but it’s also terrible for your health as well. Some of the symptoms of online addicts are anxiety, depression, isolation, defensiveness, a good way to avoid doing any work and is also terrible for your eyes.

Some of the physical symptoms of being addicted to the online world are backaches, headaches, weight loss or weight gain, disturbance in sleep, and carpal tunnel.

We have come a long way to get where we are in today’s busy world but with sustainable living becoming a new trend in today’s world you would think that we would be getting better at reducing our carbon footprint and not moving it to another platform. In a way it is better since we are not necessarily getting a hard copy of something but with technology growing, I would think so would our knowledge on finding better solutions to living more sustainably.