Digital pollution: practices of Canadian banks reviewed
January 9, 2025
The Digital Pollution Observatory, a study group created by the RBC Financial Group Chair of E-Commerce, has published a report that measures the environmental impact of digital practices in the Canadian banking industry.
The authors of this study are Sylvain Sénécal, Professor and Chairholder, Sylvain Amoros, Adjunct Professor and researcher, and Victor Prouteau, student and researcher.
The Observatory measured the carbon footprint of websites and traffic acquisition practices for 9 Canadian banks of varying sizes over a one-year period. This study seeks to inform the public about the digital practices of its banks and to contribute to the sustainability of the transition towards carbon neutrality in banks.
Here are some of the highlights from this report:
- Three banks alone account for two thirds of the total emissions of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e), i.e., the reference value that expresses, in one common unit, the amounts of emissions from various greenhouse gases.
- There are significant performance variations. The most polluting bank emits twice as many grams of CO2e per Internet user as the least polluting one.
- Advertising happens to be the main cause behind the variations in the obtained results. When users land on a website from an advertisement, they pollute 418 times more than if they were to land from a natural traffic source.
- Social media represents 57% of all emissions for just 1% of traffic acquisition volume.
The study encourages banks to rethink their digital strategies to make them more accountable and reduce their carbon footprint.
- Optimizing new customer acquisition campaigns in terms of sobriety must become a priority by promoting more durable and sustainable acquisition methods.
Read the Observatory’s full report on digital pollution in the Canadian banking sector [in French only]
About Digital Pollution
Digital activities, such as online banking, produce greenhouse gases mainly because of the energy required to manufacture and power Internet users’ devices and data centre servers. Such infrastructure consumes a lot of electricity that is often generated from fossil fuels. In short, every click and every online transaction has a carbon footprint due to energy consumption and the industrial processes associated with it.