It is necessary to perform audits and technology overviews to measure and thus reduce your IT carbon footprint.

Start simply with online calculator tools and then take a step further by implementing full hardware and software audits.

As there is not yet a comprehensive way to calculate your total footprint, first identify the environmental indicators (energy, GHG, tension over fresh water, resource depletion … ). Then, define the scope. You may want to measure:

• the infrastructure (datacenter, cloud, etc.)
• the users' environment (devices, printing, etc.)
• the Information System Flows (waste, power consumption, etc.)
• the ecommerce website, ERP, GED …

Set also the timeline and frequency of your measurements.

Include equipment ratio per employee for asset / hardware audits and lifecycle assessments (LCA).

After doing so, you can use some of the following nice online tools:‍

• ‍Google Developers, for both performance and efficiency of websites/databases/apps‍
• Websitecarbon for a fast overview of your website digital footprint

For software engineering, you may ask the help of a third-party company to assess your software carbon footprint in terms of design (front-end) and architecture / coding (back-end). Implement necessary actions to reduce its carbon footprint and optimize the solutions you have before launching costly projects. Please also refer to our dedicated page on design and coding best practices.

At least, always audit before disassembling hardware or software. It will help you understand which ones can be re-used, re-conditioned and what has to be properly recycled.