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Environmental Impact

How environmentally friendly are Dropbox's servers? I am curious to know how Dropbox would respond to this article (https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/) about the environmental impact of "the cloud". I depend on your excellent service but want to continue doing so with a reasonably clear conscience! Thanks

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Accepted answers

BenDBX

Hi @Bearshead,

Thanks for your question. While I'm not able to share the locations of our data centers, I am happy to provide a few additional resources about Dropbox's environmental impact.

How we’re making Dropbox data centers 100% carbon neutral

Dropbox ESG Report

Regards,

Ben

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Hannah

Hey @Bearshead, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.

I believe you'll find this blog post very interesting.

Should you need additional info or have any questions, let us know.

Bearshead

Thanks Hannah, that is encouraging. Do you know whether Dropbox's servers are involved in the overuse of water in Arizona & Utah as described in the article?

BenDBX

Hi @Bearshead,

Thanks for your question. While I'm not able to share the locations of our data centers, I am happy to provide a few additional resources about Dropbox's environmental impact.

How we’re making Dropbox data centers 100% carbon neutral

Dropbox ESG Report

Regards,

Ben

Bearshead

Thank you both for your speedy responses. Both the reports boost my confidence in your products. I also appreciate that you can't (and shouldn't) disclose the actual locations, but assuming that all the reports are true then it seems highly unlikely that you are wasting water.

alisonm1

@bearhead thanks for asking this question and raising the topic of the significant impact that data centres have on global emissions.

I note that the replies from Dropbox staff @benDBX and @Hannah both reference posts from 2020 and 2021, which is a considerably long time in terms of climate change. Why hasn't Dropbox updated their ESG page since 2020, or put put an impact report since 2022?

I'm not so interested in what dropbox "intends" to do by 2030 --- I want to know what is Dropbox doing right now with regards to neutralising its Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions? It's been 4 years since this very short blog piece, and it's concerning that a 4-year old post is all we have to go off. What improvement, if any, in real terms has been made since that post? How much progress has been made in sourcing renewable energy for the data centres since 2020?

As a business customer trying to minimise emissions in our supply chain -- I'd love to know this information because software is a considerably emissions source for us.