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Cleaning up and do things differently
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Welcome to issue 62 of Curiously Green.
For those of you who attended last month’s Amplifi event you’ll know that we are in the process of updating our Digital Declutter toolkit with the latest thinking and advice for industry figures. In the meantime tomorrow, the 15th March, marks the 5th Digital Clean Up day. It is an initiative that I encourage all our subscribers to participate in. Taking some simple steps detailed on the site will help reduce your personal or organisational digital footprint.
Other parts of the internet are being currently being cleaned up too. Spotify has removed some Andrew Tate podcasts from Spotify after outrage from users and employees alike. The presence of this content on the platform came as a shock to many, including me as a long term subscriber. When reporting it as contravening their hateful content policy, their response was that it was inline with policy and would remain in place, something they seem to be slowly backtracking on.
The matter prompted me to cancel the subscription and move elsewhere. It served as a reminder that big platforms often feel they owe long term users nothing but that we don’t have to be wedded to the status quo. We can change our minds and do things differently, even if it’s a simple as moving to a different music streaming platform. Cleaning up and doing things differently will be the newsletter theme this month.
I hope you enjoy it!
Andy
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Curious picks from the green web
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Working out the environmental savings of accessibility
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I highly recommend this talk by Chris Adams on the environmental savings of web accessibility. For ethical web designers accessibility and sustainability often go hand in hand. This talk offers a brilliant and fascinating look at how a more equitable web is a more sustainable one and vice versa.
The context, framings and analysis are spot on. Consume with a brew of your choice.
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Drupal gets a native web sustainability tool
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Some readers may remember that in January, WordPress disbanded its Sustainability team. One of the initiatives that was effected was a sustainability plugin the team were working on.
It’s heartening to see that other open source platforms are doing things differently. Maintainers in the Drupal community have just released a Carbon Impact Evaluator tool that may be of interest to Drupal using readers.
Perhaps Matt Mullenweg could take note…
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"Tesla Takedown" protests continue
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The Tesla Takedown movement is a protest movement targeting Tesla. The decentralised movement has been amplified on BlueSky (home to many former X users) by people like Alex Winter the actor, film maker and activist (and Bill from Bill & Ted).
It’s an interesting study into how online organising has real world consequences with Tesla sales plummeting across Europe and the US. Tesla’s stock price is currently trending downwards and impacting Musk’s wealth and power.
Could 2025 see more real world resistance organised on alternative social platforms?
Image By Becker1999 – CC BY 2.0, Link
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People don’t need new facts – they need a new story … change their story and change their behaviour.
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Rob Hopkins
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Some curious reading and listening
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Digital Degrowth and House of Life
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No review this month, work deadlines and half term meant that sustainability related content consumption was at lower levels than normal since the last issue of Curiously Green.
In its place I’d like to share a couple of new things that are making the Wholegrain team curious at the moment.
Firstly a new podcast from our co-founder Tom called House of Life. Tom and his co-host Asim Hussain will be exploring the deeper meaning of sustainability by bridging philosophy, spirituality, and politics, challenging dogmatic thinking, and opening minds to new possibilities. If that’s not the right podcast for a newsletter about doing things differently I don’t know what is.
Secondly a preview of a future book review. Wholegrain MD Chris and I will be reading Digital Degrowth, written by Micheal Kwet and published by our friends at Pluto Press. The book sets out “a new framework for the digital society that merges the science of degrowth with a global analysis of the high-tech economy”.
I’d love to hear from any subscribers who have read the book with their thoughts and takeaways.
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"Things done differently" from the Curiously Green community and beyond
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How to do home heating differently? This question has been on our collective mind this month. After a wonderful Climate Cafe with SuSy house I came across site from Nesta. It allows you to find heat pump enthusiasts in your area who can give real life insights into installing and using domestic heat pumps.
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Want to do use online tools and platforms differently? This site aims to help you de-google-ify the internet. I love the showcase of alternatives to big tech, low key admire the design aesthetic, but can’t yet vouch for the tools suggested…
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Want to think differently about the challenges posed by Trump? The wonderful Rob Hopkins suggests a creative and positive solution in this piece.
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Want to change the way website sustainability is done? The BBC research team do too, but we think they could collaborate a little more closely with our industry and community.
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Finally if you want to show you’re not using LLMs to generate content for your website why not add an AI statement like this wonderful one on Hidde de Vries’ personal site?
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We want to hear from you!
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Submit ideas, news and links for the next issue
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Don’t forget, we want to hear more from you, the Curiously Green community! If you’re heard or read something that may be of interest, please share any links, and your thoughts with us.
Even better, we’d love to know what you’re working on. If you have any case studies or projects you’d like to share, or new approaches you’ve tried that may be of interest, this is a great way to share with like minded folk so please head over to our submission form and tell us all about it!
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This issue of Curiously Green is curated and written by Andy Davies
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