How to reduce our digital carbon footprint by 50%: ESCP Green Hackathon solutions

The planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change.

In the last twenty years, digitalisation has positively impacted the global environment. However, the digital revolution still has its price: because of emissions, consumption, and waste, its environmental footprint is less and less ecological.

It is crucial to recognise the problem and take action to create awareness in people and companies for sustainable digital development.
The Internet alone consumes 10% of the world's electricity and pollutes six times more than ten years ago.
The carbon footprint of our digital devices and the systems that support them represent approximately 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And it is expected to double by 2025.

We must act now to reduce our Digital Carbon Footprint!  

THE CHALLENGE 
On November 9, 2021, the ESCP Turin Campus Career Service & Corporate Relations team brought together 17 companies and challenged our students with a Green Hackathon focused on the Digital Carbon Footprint. More than 150 ESCP students, divided into 31 groups and supported by 37 mentors, competed to design innovative sustainable ideas to reduce the Digital Carbon Footprint of a company by 50% in one year.
ESCP students had only six hours to prepare a 15-second video describing their ideas and a one-page report detailing the practical requirements to transform the concept into reality. The results were judged by a jury composed of Alessandro Lanteri, Paolo Salza, Brooke Hopkins, Martina Spriano and Christophe Debuysscher.

THE FINALIST PROJECTS

The jury, as well as the mentors, were impressed by the quality and value of the projects proposed by the 31 ESCP student teams. Three of them were selected to pitch their projects during the final leg of the event: 

• Greentopia, made up of Fabio Belfiore, Giovanni Francia, Florindo Sarpi, Sidney Togu, Matteo Trulli, presented a proposal to limit the storage of useless data on the cloud by implementing an expiration date system on the data with the aim to drastically limit energy consumption.
• Rose, made up of Michele Currado and Louise de Blommaert, designed a monthly competition for the most eco-friendly employee, based on the assessment of the efficient use of energy versus productivity. In order to help the company reduce its digital carbon footprint, the team has sought to increase the employees' awareness of the topic, making them play an active role in this value shift.
• Susties, made up of Sophia Bernardy, Li Biao, Raffaele Campione, Quentin Cheret, Miguel Ulises Castro Espinosa, proposed a project to make data servers’ accounts as circular as possible. To do so, they decided to follow the framework of the 7 Rs of Sustainability: Rethink, refuse, reduce, re-choose, reuse, repair, recycle. For example, one of the suggestions for the R of recycling was to recycle the heat generated by data centres.

The latter was voted the winner of the "ESCP Green Hackathon | Digital Carbon Footprint".

THE PRIZE
The winning team Susties had the opportunity to present its project at the "ZED - Zero Emission Digital" conference, part of the IAB Forum 2021, organised by IAB Italia, on November 16.
 Assistant Professor Alisa Sydow, game master of the Hackathon, and Miguel Ulises Castro Espinosa, ESCP MBA in International Management student and representative of Susties, participated in Milan's event. 
The winning team also will have an exclusive lunch with a VIP from Davines and get to visit its innovative and sustainable plant.

SPECIAL THANKS
The second edition of the ESCP Green Hackathon was amazing, thanks to the efforts of all the people who made it possible. Special thanks to the game master, Assistant Professor Alisa Sydow, and Prof Francesco Rattalino, who kicked off the event, the jury members, the mentors and Turin Campus Career Service & Corporate Relations team.
Special thanks go to the seven inspirational speakers: Elena Chisena, Mauro Bombacigno, Francesco Mondora, Heiner von Brachel, Helena Babelon, Fabio Cancarè, Alberto Riccabone, to our technical partners Plesh and IAB Italia, and to the 17 companies who participated in the Hackathon: AlixPartners, Avio Aero - a GE Aviation Business, The Adecco Group, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), BNP Paribas, CACEIS, Davines, Eaton, Edison SpA, Electrolux, Facile.it, Free2Move eSolutions, PROMETEON TYRE GROUP, Reply, TeamSystem, U.G.A. Nutraceuticals Srl, UniCredit.

Congratulations to all the participants on your great work, and thank you for helping raise awareness about the Digital Carbon Footprint.