This document discusses how improving information literacy skills can help create a greener world by reducing carbon emissions from information seeking on the internet. It is estimated that CO2 emissions from information technologies will increase up to 3% of global emissions by 2020, but using environmentally friendly IT solutions could prevent a 15% increase. Individuals and organizations bear responsibility to decrease emissions through strategies like green campus and green IT that change habits of information professionals. Searching the internet corresponds to CO2 emissions from data centers, so unnecessary searches contribute to pollution. Developing efficient search skills through better information literacy can directly reduce emissions by making searches more accurate.

1. What is the Cost of Information Seeking on the Internet? Creating a
Greener World by Improving Information Literacy Skills
European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL),
October 22-25, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey
Hakan Yıldız
Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. hakan.yildiz@akademi.com.tr
It is anticipated that the CO2 emissions, caused by Information Technologies (IT) related productions and
consumptions will increase up to 3% of the global total CO2 emissions until 2020 (Mithas, Khuntia & Roy, 2010).
On the other hand, if correct and efficient decisions and actions are taken and if environmental friendly IT solutions
are used, it will be possible to prevent CO2 emission by up to 15% of today’s emissions until 2020 (Boccaletti,
Löffler & Oppenheim, 2008).
All individuals, especially the information professionals actively using these technologies and the academic circles,
bear tremendous responsibility in decreasing IT-originated emissions and in building environmental awareness.
Digital information and communication technologies and increasing rate of data usage, particularly in the higher
education, requires huge storage/backup systems (Greenpeace International, 2011).
In order to create a sustainable and egalitarian development model, each individual must be aware of the
environmental impacts of his/her daily activities. This awareness is indispensable in preventing the destruction of our
world, where we live together which we share with all the other living creatures.
It is observed that in certain developed and developing countries, which are poisoning the world by carbon emissions
day by day, works related with the creation/usage of “CO2 free” environment and/or technologies by strategies like
“Green Campus”, “greening ICT” are being accelerated in the recent years. Both as individuals as well as
corporations and organizations, we must analyse to what extent we can decrease the CO2 emissions and do our part
by developing strategies like Green Vision and Green IT.
One of the fundamental aspects of these strategies shall be to change the habits of all individuals, in particular
information professionals, in using technologies. By increasing information literacy, we must change our
information seeking behaviors and thus re-shape our “information consumption” habits. Knowing that each search
we do on the internet corresponds to a certain CO2 emission at the data center of the service provider, can be the first
step of awareness. Each unnecessary and/or unconscious search on search engines generates 0,2g CO2;
multiplication of this amount with billions every day shows to what extent each IT user negatively contributes to the
CO2 generation (Google Green, 2013). Knowing that the data centers, dubbed flueless information factories which
are positioned on the “cloud” day by day, and are in reality huge “chimneys”, may help us in changing our
information seeking habits.
We can directly contribute to the decrease of CO2 emissions by enhancing our information literacy and by
developing efficient information seeking skills thus by doing more accurate searches. In this way, information
literacy can both allow us to use the tools more efficiently and can also contribute in polluting the world less.
References
Boccaletti, G., Löffler, M. & Oppenheim, J. M. (2008). How IT can cut carbon emissions. The McKenzey Quarterly. Retrieved
April 25, 2013 from https://book4time.com/www/files/McKinsey.pdf
Google green (2013). A better web:
http://www.google.com/green/bigpicture/#/.
Better
for
the
environment.
Retrieved
January
4,
2013
from
Greenpeace International (2011). How dirty is your data? A Look at the energy choices that power cloud computing. Retrieved
April
25,
2013
from
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/climate/2011/Cool%20IT/dirty-data-reportgreenpeace.pdf
Mithas, S., Khuntia, J. & Roy, P.K. (2010). Green information technology, energy efficiency, and profits: AIS Electronic Library.
ICIS 2010 Proceedings. Retrieved January 2, 2013 from http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2010_submissions/11/
Keywords: Information literacy skills, environment, environmental sustainability, green library
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