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The digital age isn’t the sci-fi utopia we were promised.

Most people never consider the energy it takes to store, deliver, and consume the masses of data required to make the internet function. Whether we’re content consumers watching streaming video and using banking apps, or content creators on video calls or social media, the energy used for digital content has a shocking carbon footprint.

This book explores how we can measure and mitigate these environmental impacts. It delivers a foundational knowledge of sustainability, the effects of content creation and consumption, and why all this increasingly matters to business management and the planet as a whole.

Sustainable Content talks about:

• Assessing the environmental impact of our data
• Measuring emissions of any form of digital content, from emails to video meetings
• Understanding the accelerating impacts of AI
• Adding value at work with a sustainability focus
• Identifying solutions for change
• Mitigating the carbon footprint of data by creating more sustainable content

Together, we can improve usability, and reduce environmental and financial costs — all while boosting audience satisfaction.

Sign up to be notified when this approachable and actionable guide for thoughtful content creation and consumption is available for purchase.

Advance praise for Sustainable Content

This book transformed the way I advise clients to consider the impact of “just-in-case” content. Instead of narrowly focusing on UX and internal resources to manage content, we can now put hard numbers to the greater cost to the environment. Alisa’s case for sustainable content isn’t just about best practices. It’s about empowering ourselves as professional communicators to advocate for responsible use of resources far beyond the short-term impact we’re used to focusing on.

Kristina Halvorson
CEO, Brain Traffic and author, Content Strategy for the Web

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Storing unlimited globs of content on the internet could never be cost-free, but it’s been hard to pinpoint what to measure. Now, Alisa Bonsignore has done the math for us. With Sustainable Content, we can make data-driven decisions to save the world while using content wisely.

Torrey Podmajersky
President, Catbird Content and author, Strategic Writing for UX

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In addressing the environmental impact of creating and transferring and storing digital content, Alisa uncovers not necessarily another problem—but another solution we can all drive toward as we look to create sustainability in our own lives, our communities, and our planet. What’s more, as she outlines the ways we can reduce our content footprint, she provides a template for more effective and efficient communication, full stop. (Not to mention, she creates a compelling argument for keeping your video off on your next Zoom.)

Melanie Mannarino
Author, The (Almost) Zero-Waste Guide

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This is a must-read for anyone in a position to influence digital best practices at large institutions and organizations. In presenting a case for prioritizing digital sustainability, Alisa Bonsignore shares tons of valuable data, useful evaluation tools, and actionable recommendations. Easily readable with information presented in an understated, matter-of-fact manner that can occasionally make your hair stand on end. I couldn’t put it down!

Joyce Peralta
Manager, Digital Communications. McGill University

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Bonsignore’s work looks at the cost of digital content, something that was hidden to me before reading her work. We’ve been sold the belief that digital is free and light, and good for the planet because it isn’t printed on paper. She showed me exactly how misguided that belief is. In addition, she lays out strategy for not only good content, but good business practices that retain talent, customers, and increase ROI. This book is a fresh look at sustainability from the lens of a content expert with 25 years of experience and a heart entangled with sustainability since the last century. 

Laurie McGinley, AIA
Founder, Via Lucent

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With facts and compelling writing, Alisa Bonsignore takes you on an eye-opening journey that examines the unsustainable environmental cost of digital content. Read this book. Instead of feeling paralyzed by the enormity of the problem, this urgent call-to-action will make you “digitally-intentional” to create more sustainable digital content.

Anita Misra-Press, PhD
Fellow, American Medical Writers Association

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When I moved from print journalism to digital content, I thought that because was pushing pixels instead of paper I was doing my part to help reduce waste and its negative impact on the environment – something I’d embraced in my personal life as well.
 
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Well, maybe not “wrong,” but I was certainly misguided.

As it turns out—and as Bonsignore writes in her book, Sustainable Content: How to Measure and Mitigate the Carbon Footprint of Digital Data—“Moving data requires energy.”

Apparently, I wasn’t quite making the impact that I thought I was.

Thankfully, many of the best practices embraced by digital content creators—like using plain language and doing more with less—puts us in a prime position to use everyday tools to help lead sustainability efforts.
 
This book will help you understand the ecological costs of digital content and its impact on sustainability. It will teach you how to measure the footprint of digital content, whie considering the impact of AI and the ROI of sustainable content.
 
And, perhaps most importantly, Bonsignore helps us see how the content we create—and the best practices used to create it—can be both useful and sustainable.

Natalie Marie Dunbar
CEO of the Content Practice Architect, LLC, and author, From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice.

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It’s been more than 30 years since Mike Markel first asserted that all employees, including technical communicators and content experts, have an ethical obligation to support the environment by limiting use of energy and natural resources in their work. Since then, however, relatively little has been written about the environmental costs of technical and professional communication. Bonsignore’s book explains the issues clearly and shows that computing the environmental costs of our work is not only feasible, but ethically necessary. Bonsignore shows that while climate change is the most wicked of problems, creating content sustainably is an ethical and financially beneficial response.

Russell Willerton, PhD
Author of Plain Language and Ethical Action: A Dialogic Approach to Technical Content in the Twenty-First Century