Do you really want to show the planet you care?
Then settle in for another night on the couch streaming your favourite movies and shows, because according to binge-watching think tank Netflix, that’s pretty much the greenest life you could lead.
“Sitting still while watching Netflix probably saves more CO2 than Netflix burns,” the company said on their blog yesterday.
Go ahead, you’re literally saving the planet the more you watch.
Netflix’s infrastructure generated significantly fewer carbon emissions for each hour of streaming in 2014 than the average human emits in an hour while breathing, a fact used to essentially shift the blame for environmental degradation via binge-watching to the devices used in actually consuming the content – TVs, modems, Wi-Fi and the like.
A few more fun facts:
– A viewer who turned off their TV to read books would consume about 24 books a year in equivalent time, for a carbon footprint around 65kg CO2e – over 200 times more than Netflix streaming servers.
– The amount of carbon equivalent emitted in order to produce a single quarter-pound hamburger can power Netflix infrastructure to enable viewing by 10 member families for an entire year.
Efficiency is the name of the game for Netflix, which has optimized its ability to simultaneously run as many videos as possible through its data centre.
With 60 million subscribers streaming 10 billion hours of content last quarter alone, you begin to understand the significance of owning that efficiency.