At first when you ask yourself this one, you kind of go - of course! Think about all that packaging & shipping! But then you kind of go: wait a sec - those digital downloads are hosted in big, power-hungry data centres. Microsoft recently undertook a study where they invited in the Natural Resource Defence Council to review their analysis on this very topic. And the result was that digital downloads ARE more environmentally friendly.
A couple of the key stats from this report are:
- Digital download of Office (a nice chunky sized download that one!) avoided 8 times the amount of carbon compared to shipping & producing a DVD;
- Carbon emissions avoided through online purchasing of 10 million copies is equivalent to:
- the electric consumption of 7,715 US households, or
- 13,008 passengers cars driven in one year, or
- 231 acres of avoided Amazon rainforest deforestation.
Checkout the full paper here: http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/go-green/
