I’ve had some good conversations with Gauthier Roussilhe about the differences in the digital sustainable movement in the UK and France. He continues to make me think with his insights as to how digital sustainability is addressed across borders, and how sharing this information is essential to really move us forward in addressing this issue.

Following the success of Branch magazine, which launched last month, Gauthier took advantage of the ever expanding audience for the topic, to share what is happening in France and encourage others to share what is happening locally to them.

I have to say that I am really impressed with how much is happening in France to green digital, and I agree with the more holistic approach outlined in the article that goes beyond just carbon. This is a great read!

Greenlist is a new app for businesses, designed to help companies who are looking to engage and empower their teams to make more sustainable choices. The app is linked to slack, and relies on reward incentives and friendly competition between colleagues, to inspire each other to think more about their day to day choices and how these impact the environment.

I’ve written before about the challenge of incorporating our personal carbon footprints into the corporate count, so found this new Slack based service Greenlist to be really interesting as a way to get staff more personally invested in a culture of sustainability at work, especially if this is a new direction for your organisation.

It has some similarities with DoNation, one of my favourite tools, which has been really effective in driving engagement in personal sustainability action and a friendly sense of competition within our team at Wholegrain Digital.

Some of you in the UK may have caught this recent documentary from Channel 4’s Dispatches, in which Sophie Morgan investigated the carbon footprint of the tech industry.

It was a really well made show that highlighted why we need to take digital sustainability seriously, and shone a light on the huge amounts of energy used by our industry. Personally, I think that we need to focus more on what we can do as digital professionals to pursue sustainability than what “consumers” of data can do to cut down their internet usage, but, like any aspect of sustainability, the truth is that we probably need to tackle it from every angle.

If you missed it, you can still catch this programme on the Channel 4 website for the next couple of weeks. I hope some of you can also access it outside of the UK.

This somewhat ominously named book from the World Economic Forum might not sound like your ideal choice of bedtime reading, but I have found it surprisingly readable and insightful.

It sets out the context of the modern world in which we all live, defined by three key characteristics that differ from earlier generations – interdependence, velocity and complexity. Interestingly, they cite the internet as being a key driving force in the rapidly increasing interdependence of nations, velocity of our lives and economies, and complexity of the world we live in. All of these things can be positive, but can also carry with them systemic risks that make issues such as pandemics and climate change difficult to prevent and solve.

This book takes a view that you might not expect from the World Economic Forum, commonly known these days as the meeting place of billionaires, and talks about the need to use the economic disturbance of the pandemic to create a future economy that is both inclusive and environmentally sustainable. It challenges the “tyranny of GDP” and references ideas such as the circular economy, doughnut economics and even de-growth!