Sustainable Podcasting: Eco-Friendly Practices for Creators – PCI 438

Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry. I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist at Blueberry. And I'm Todd Cochran, founder of Blueberry. Ever thought about how your podcast affects the environment or just your electric bill? Podcasting is generally low impact, but everything from gear to storage to streaming leaves an environmental footprint. Of course, even the servers powering your podcast require energy and resources.

And it's one of the reasons why we often will do cleanup of our back end to reduce storage. And Yeah. As a company, of course, it lowers our bill as well. So there's a dual purpose there. You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting. With all the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting,

welcome. Let's dive in.

As we think about it and I think about when I lived in Hawaii, how much power cost there and how much really it all consumed, I I would, like, turn my entire studio down to cold iron, and maybe only have the computer on. That would be the only thing I I would I would leave and, you know, that seemed to, to really, to help my electricity. But now living in Michigan, it's not as bad, but I still I do the same thing. I shut everything down, and I have a

lot of stuff on on switches. So, you know, the the equipment we use definitely uses a lot of juice. It's really just, like, the impact that everything has to do with technology nowadays is just different than what it was twenty years ago when podcasting started. You know, just the everyone has a cell phone in their hand all day every day, the way that, you know, education works, the way that everyone, including us, has moved remote and we don't have an office anymore. It's everything has

changed significantly. But there are ways that you can optimize your podcast setup for

energy efficiency. I I view everything in this scenario, you know, as a win win. Like, if you're gonna save money and it's gonna be sustainable, that's wonderful. So I think one of those ways is just choosing energy efficient devices like Energy Star. They they do computers, lights, batteries, you know, rechargeable batteries, everything like that. There's just a number of ways that you could probably reduce your energy on an everyday basis.

Yeah. And even dealing with lighting and you know, another thing I was thinking about is all these wall warts we have, you know, plug you know, to charge our phones and all that stuff. Well, even if your phone's not plugged into the thing, that transformer's pulling energy. Mhmm. And, you know, think about maybe unplugging those things, or charge from your computer if it's already running. You get if you got an extra port, use that instead of a wall or, you know, just little things.

And I and I typically try to have most of my stuff on a switch. If I'm not using that area, then it then it's off. But still, I you know, even the desk is right here. I got one, two monitors, speaker, you know, the the RodeCaster. And, you know, it all adds up in the end and adds to, you know, how many every kilowatts. I mean, you know, in the scheme of things, it may not be that big. But over many, many months and and and years, it it definitely adds up for sure.

I know that, you know, Mike, you had mentioned something as early we're talking that people were resistant. I know some of my family members are really resistant going from in in the set in the Indescent. And yeah. In the lights to, LEDs. And to be honest, some of those early LEDs were pretty bad. Mhmm. But now they've got a good color.

And, You could you could even get the color changing ones. So you have whatever color you want and then and that's cool. Hey, Mike. I laugh. Your virtual background shows kind of that yellow color from those old style lamps. And now I want real white. So the h the LEDs seem to do, you know, serve me better at least. I know it doesn't serve everyone. But, you know, that definitely is is a That's done on the air conditioning because those things put out heat, you know. The LEDs not as much.

And, you know, and I my electricity bill got so high in Hawaii that I it wasn't sustainable. My fate 5 or $600 because that's what the electricity cost there. And I put 36 panels solar panels on the roof, and it essentially, I paid for that system in four years and four months. And so, you know, that's now I've been on the house, you know, ten plus years and free electricity for all that time. So while it was a major upfront expense, not everyone can afford that. There were tech incentives.

I I don't know if there still is. There are. Well, you know, randomly for some places, they change them over the years. But, yeah, in general, like, not necessarily everything that you're doing is gonna be perfect for sustainability. Like, it might be helpful, but, also, it's gonna like I said before, it's a win win. Like, it's it helped you. Like, you told me you were like I added these solar panels, and I was like, to your

whole house? Like, wasn't that expensive? And you were like, it's gonna work out in the end. Like, this is for my actual benefit. Yeah. It's great for this, but it's me first in this scenario. Yeah. And I do that, you know, for practical reasons as well. You know, my ham radio setup is powered off of a deep cycle battery that's charged by solar. Mhmm. And the reason for that, if power goes out, I can still access that system. I mean, you know, obviously.

Now now if you're living in an apartment or condo, you may not have a choice, but maybe your associations already put solar on the roof. Who knows? But I I think it's a great investment in any of course, it works better in some parts of the country than others depending on your your your sun print, I guess that is, your sun footprint. You know, Hawaii was a zone six. It was the best it could get. Now Michigan, I think, is like a zone three. And, you know, farther south you go, it gets better.

In the winter, I have to use a

battery charger. Yeah. I'm I'm sure. But I guess, you know, there's other things you can do too. Minimize your podcast digital carbon footprint is real simple. Do you need to be encoding at a 28 k? Do you or should you be at 64 k mono? How much AI usage are you using? And one thing that we found with pi and maybe is pretty remarkable to everyone is our pi usage fees, that we pay every month, is very inexpensive.

And now we're still using energy when we do those calls, but I think it's cheaper than the manual. If you think about everyone having a $20 account with OpenAI, it's cheaper than doing all those all those queries because we've already prebuilt the query. We send the query once, and we know the results we're gonna get back. We're not sending the query multiple times

and using more energy. Matter of fact, we just switched to new, image generator because we wanted better quality and and be more efficient. So I think it all it all works. And even our CDN, we send the media that podcasters upload. They send it out to the closest point of presence Well, basically, it goes to, like, 50 or 60 or hundred different locations. And then when the media is requested, it's got the shortest backhaul, to the person. Now what what does that really mean?

More energy efficiency. It may be microscopic at that level, but every time millions and millions of file requests. But then it's also good for whoever is on the receiving end of that. Like, yeah, it's it's, you know, taking less energy to get to the person, but, also, it's making the person happier because they're getting it faster and better. Yeah. And, you know, and and the the point about encoding your MP threes, if you're encoding them 64 mono, it it's really a good quality.

And unless you're playing jazz or classical, nobody's gonna notice it's not stereo. And that's a smaller file. So if I'm out in the stick somewhere with a flaky Internet connection, I can still get that 64 k mono file quicker than if it was a one twenty eight stereo or higher. You know? Some people really crank up the the bit rate, and it's not necessary. And and it just takes up space and time and all that stuff. I'm a bit of a hoarder, but you can always audit and clean up your old

episodes. And if you have outdated or inactive episodes, consider archiving or delete them to free up digital storage space. I guess that's the fact. That stays well, space will still exist, but you're not holding that bucket, you know, of bits. And, again, it's, again, all microscopic at this point. But, again, digital waste, even digital content has a a cost.

Cloud storage and I AI operations all require electricity. They're in big data centers. And that's one things we do internally about every six six months. We look and say, okay. Do we need these additional servers? You know, we've got some servers that sit just idle. And I said, do these need to sit idle? Can we spin these up fast enough if there's an outage to not have an impact or do we need to have one

sitting idle all the time? And really, the recommendation then became the one we have to have one at idle. It's just sitting there in case the other one crashes. But the third backup, it can be spun down and we can send a command if we go to the secondary, hey. Spin up. That way we're not sitting there just having that that server even though it's kind of virtual in the cloud. It's not burning energy

and it's not cost us money. And I think some folks out there are probably using some cloud backups. And, again, I think delete unnecessary drafts and duplicate content, is important. And everything now seems to be digitally edited and everyone's using Descript and tools like that. I generally try to do, like, once a year or so, move the super important things to me,

to an external hard drive. Like, yeah, I do use, cloud storage, but there's some of it that's just already on a hard drive from, you know, a decade ago that I still want but don't actually need really, like, anywhere online. I don't need easy access to it. And so it's just things like that that you're like, do I actually need this here? You know? And it it it goes quite quite, Mike. I was just gonna say an additional benefit of all this is it keeps you more organized.

Yeah. That's true. So it's simpler for you to find stuff if you've been dealing with it, by taking it offline, putting it on a hard drive, whatever, but it keeps you less cluttered. And and that's, you know, probably not a bad benefit all on its own. Yeah. One thing that I continue to use is a notebook. And but I've got to the point where I don't know. I buy these this one where this one come from. Probably Amazon or some place. My basics ad

came came from Amazon. And you can see it's kind of but I use about one of these a year. That's the important part is you actually use it. So many people buy paper stuff and then it just sits there and then they buy more. So I I've got a couple of these sitting on the shelf that are when this one gets filled, I'll be able to grab it, but I I use it then I archive it. Now what I'm gonna do with maybe it'll end up in a burn pile someday. But or recycle, you know, wherever it may

go. But the main thing is if you're gonna use paper, use it responsibly,

you know, don't I used to have scraps of I used to use receipts. Whenever I had for receipt, I used to write notes. Yeah. It's not real good at finding stuff later. Yes. But, you know, digital notes, I'm I'm better. And we're starting to do that more here at Blueberry is a little is everything is in digital. And, Notion, Google Docs, Evernote. Mike, what's that? People that's I know people that still print every email to read it. It's crazy.

That's crazy. Can't imagine. Mike, what's that notebook that you have that I've considered getting? The one that you write in, and then you can, like, clear it out and upload it. I think it's called Rocketbook. Rocketbook. Yeah. That one's erasable, you know, you write in it in regular ink, and then you can, hit it with your camera. You know, there's an app, and then it

digitizes it for you. And then you can wipe off the the paper, with, you know, a little bit of water, and and, you can rewrite, you know, write on it again. It's kind of the best of both worlds. Yeah. It was kind of interesting. I had a, tax document because I'm here in, Philippines, so don't have a printer.

And so I'm like, had to sign something for the accountant and they didn't wanna send the paper down with personal data to the front desk at the condo here to have them print it and see, you know, my tax data. So I was able to figure out how to digitally sign and then, you know, and then basically keep it completely paperless. And it's good for security too. So, you know, it's all contained, you know, on on the Apple cloud.

And, I didn't have to worry about, you know, someone take an extra copy of that paper. But digital business cards, I've used those a little bit. I have used one from Popple, I think is the company I use. Yep. Well, even just the the QR codes that we have on our own. Like, we we have physically printed business cards that we take. It's just they're used less and less as the years go by, and we have our own q QR codes on there That automatically opens up with all of our information.

And then on top of that, at this point, everyone's been to an event where you scan your badge with QR code that's on there. Yeah. And, you know, you automatically get that information. I love that. I I kinda am over the taking business cards for the most part just because, like, you gotta keep track of them. And this is just neater and cleaner. Because, ultimately, the business cards come back and I wrap a rubber band around them and

I write the event name. And then if I need to go back to them, I do, but usually because we have the scan data. Yeah. And but if you're an attendee, the good thing about attendee at events now, you can scan a badge as an attendee most times and have that contact information in their event system without paying extra fee.

So that allows you to stay organized and stay digital too. Even on our promotional materials that we do have on tables, it we have QR codes. So oftentimes, people are like, I don't wanna carry the paper. Yep. And they'll just Yep. Yep. And now you can take a picture of a QR code on, I think, on Android, load it still load the QR code later. Does Apple I can't remember. I believe so. Yeah. Think both Apple, you just you you

hit on the picture. You just hold hold your thumb on the QR code and it'll pop up. Yeah. So, you know, you don't necessarily have to go to the website immediately. Just take a picture of the QR code and come back later. And one thing that we're looking at now because expense it's very expensive to travel. Yeah. And, I think that we are gonna be more looking at trying to do as much stuff digitally as possible. Some stuff has to be done in person like this for doing this

recording today. Mike, you're in in Traverse City. Mackenzie, you're in Columbus. I'm in The Philippines, and here we are virtually and be able to get a call high quality recording if the road caster cooperates. So I I think this digital stuff now of what we've really learned is Zoom is is basically probably cost the airlines a lot of money. Yeah. I would assume so. Yes. You are correct. You know. And COVID has made it more acceptable to do meetings, online.

Yeah. I I remember being in Hawaii and being asked by ESPN to come to New York and they wanted me there in two days. And, well, you know, it takes time. Twelve hours to get there. You know, I would I'm like, okay. Buy a airline ticket short short notice and get a hotel room and be a little bit irritated that they want me on two days notice and get there and do a couple hour meeting where an hour of it could have really

it could have all been done virtually. There'd have been no reason for me to travel, but because they were old school, they wanted to have that in person face to face. And I think that was prior to COVID. So I think now that mentality is kind of Yeah. You you and I later this later this morning have a a meeting with a company, you know, virtually. And Yeah. It's just, you know, that's the way things are done now and and that's actually good.

And I think if, you know, if you're recording a podcast, a lot of people like to do the in person thing. You know, Obviously, Rogan wants people in studio because it's an aesthetics deal. But think about the cost. You know? You have to go to all those folks have to fly in to Austin. In Austin to to be on his show. So, you know, he has a huge footprint for his show. Television does the same thing.

And maybe these tools will get better at some point where you can look like you're in the studio and you're really not, but, time will tell. I think for the majority of us, we don't have the clout to ask someone to come to our studio from another state, or even drive in. Yeah. I would assume not. But I think one of the things that, like, has really just made us more open to this type of stuff is we just transitioned very easily, you know, during COVID of we went home, and then we realized this

is in fact doable. We were we were done with the office before we actually were able to get rid of the office. That's for sure. Yeah. We held the office for what? Eighteen more months? Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. And we were we were too stuck in a lease. In the area. Yeah. And, you know, it did nothing but collect dust. You know? So, and I understand there's a there's a push by people that have big buildings that to get people back in the office.

But, you know, in all honesty, we we had been virtual. You know, I and we've been we for what? Fourteen years, I was meeting with you on my my morning commute. And A quarter to half of the team was virtual at various times pre COVID anyway. Yeah. So I've I've never I've never, worked at the office. I've always been virtual. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think these are all things we should consider.

Digital footprint, you know, electricity we use, all that stuff. You know, they're talking about starting up nuclear reactors again because the the AI power requirements are gonna be, you know, off the chart. So, you know, every little bit of kilowatt we can in my area, the people are now waiting a couple of years to build some big buildings because they don't

have enough juice. There's not enough power on the grid for them to put in, you know, 400 amps or 600 or 800 amps of power into a into a building. And, if we all just reduce just the itsy bitsy bit, and maybe it'll allow new business to come in and, you know, hire people and and contribute to the economy. But we will see. And some things you can consider is dedicating an episode to Earth Day. Mike, isn't that you and your missus, anniversary as well? Yep. So I can never forget it.

Good for you. And, you know, maybe share something. And I think this is, you know, this is a nonpolitical topic. Anytime we save money Yeah. You know, I I I don't like paying high electricity bills. I don't wanna pay high electricity bills the rest of my life. I still got a lot of years on this earth. Yep. I'm I'm lucky, our electric service here is not that expensive.

But, again, I've noticed, you know, by changing the LEDs and turning off the studio and not news, all that stuff adds up and, you know, saves me $20 a month or something on the electric. It it it's worth it. My electricity bill just announced a month ago that they're like, just because of the region that we're in, not even our company, we're not profiting from this, but every company within this region is raising their prices. I don't know how that

works, essentially, but I'm like, okay. So what do I do to reduce my energy usage so that I can pay this electric bill? I will turn off all some of this stuff. I will do something different.

I had a, because my bill had been so high when I was living in Hawaii, I got one of those kilowatt devices and I plugged it in to everything in my office, actually my whole house and let it run for twenty four hours with everything kind of on ops normal to see what that electricity bill would be because the stuff that I would normally leave

on, stuff I would turn off. And in the end, what I determined, it was pretty remarkable to me that my studio, even doing eight episodes a month, and the lights and everything I was my lecture spell from that was about $75 Now, you know that okay, $75, but 75 times 12 A times 10, you know. That is what people pay for their podcast. Yeah. So it it it was

it it added up. Now again, if you're running a couple of monitors and a a RodeCaster and a Mac or whatever it is, you know, the the you will use a certain amount of certain amount of energy. And I and I be honest with you, I hate the energy savings settings because it always seems my screens go dark before I'm ready for them to go to dark. But, you know, at least have them set to a realistic level where they Some of us need bright to be able to see everything.

Yeah. Hold on. Whatever whatever works for you as an individual Yeah. With with, you know, the the variety of options that are available nowadays, I think that's just the way that you have to move forward with everything. Yeah. So, you know, maybe, if you've got an episode coming up, talk about this with your audience. And, there's some Earth Day initiatives, hashtag Earth Day podcast. Who's doing that one? Or is that one that we made up? And that one was, I think, just recommended.

Oh. That is probably gonna be done. It's hard to know when when it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. And you can run a giveaway for listeners, any activity. I I think it's good. Yeah. Just some type of reflection is always good about this type of stuff. And and and I I to be honest with you, I don't like spending a penny more than I have to.

Mhmm. And, you know, that's one of the reasons why we've built these additional tools at Blueberry is you're now paying many of you are paying more on additional services than what you do with how much you pay Blueberry for hosting. That's why we're trying to bring these tools into Blueberry so that you can save that accumulative bill every month is now adding up. And You're not paying for five subscriptions. You're paying

for one. Yeah. So I challenge all of you that are paying for multiple subscriptions. How can we help you lower your your load on subscriptions? Yeah. Some stuff we're not gonna do. We're not gonna build a Descript. We're we're not gonna do that. But there are certain things maybe we could do. Maybe we can build something that's a a poor man's editor or something depending on what you need. Just let us know what you think we should do. Any thoughts here?

Well, you know, just just know, you know, sustainability can, you know, has many benefits, you know, not only are you, you know, kinda contributing to the whole the whole system, but also for you. You know? Just remember, you know, your electric bill, your org keeping things organized helps. You know, if you've got a lot of extra equipment laying around powered up that you're not using, unplug it. You know? Sell it. Sell it on Facebook or something if you're not gonna use it.

And, you know, that that help that just helps you. I I I remember as a kid being yelled at by my dad, shut off the lights. And, of course, he had a swear word in the middle of it. And, you know, and then, you know, I mean, he would rampage sometimes. And I, you know, the kid, I'm like, a little bit I know he was paying that electric bill and he didn't wanna have any higher

than it should be. Mhmm. And, and then I remember as a, you know, having young kids in the house and I would be shut the lights off. You know, in the past five or six years, I've seen friends start buying their houses, and they're like, close the door. The air conditioning is on. You know, don't hold the refrigerator to open too long. Yeah. My my dad was, you know, he's about the doors, you know. We're not trying to heat the outside. Dang it. You know?

With more choice words. Yeah. Yeah. More choice words that, are not repeatable here on the show. But I think we've all had a a parent or grandparent or someone, Breathing down our neck. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah. But it's kinda funny. My, my mom and dad yelled about electricity bill, but my mom was really resistant to go to the LED. Well, you you remember those, those compact fluorescent little curly cube bulbs? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think those did anything other than make things look weird.

And, well, they also were supposed to last for five years, and they never did. Oh, yes. I still have one of those in my garage. It's kinda funny. Still still working. Yeah. So we've come a long way on the LED. Alright. Thanks for listening. And what is some of the funny stuff you've done to save electricity? Loved it. Love to hear from you. Have you put in a windmill or anything sustainable? Yeah. You know, water resource or There's lots of options. Lots of you are very, very, adaptable

out there. So we'd love to hear from you. So drop us an email if you, if you wanna share. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford the e's.