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Social sustainability in digital channels

Better understanding of social sustainability enables us to implement its values in our everyday lives

Equality, diversity and inclusiveness (EDI) are in our core values at Aalto, supporting our community’s wellbeing, creativity and ability to foster world-class research, teaching and impact. EDI Learning Hub offers great examples for our everyday life!

Learn about EDI topics in general

Social sustainability begins with seeing human diversity as a resource for better designs

Inclusive design principles help us consider human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference when creating for the digital environment. These principles function as starting points for us to create digital products and services that serve as many people as possible.


Attention to socially sustainable design creates results that are attractive and comfortable, easy to use and understood by the full range of users. If we only use our own abilities as a baseline, we create things that are easy to use for some but difficult for others. There are 7.4 billion people in the world. Our ambition is to create products that are physically, cognitively and emotionally appropriate for each of them. Everything starts with seeing human diversity as a resource for better designs.

Aspects of social sustainability

Environmental sustainability in digital channels

Digital sustainability puts people and planet first

Being digitally sustainable means taking an approach to creating digital services and content in a way that puts our people and planet first. The amount of people and devices connected to the internet is growing rapidly. The in 2018 that assessed the global carbon footprint of the ICT industry. There, it was estimated that ICT's share of global electricity consumption will rise up to 14% by 2040, which is a 10% increase from 2020. Therefore, it is increasingly important to focus on creating environmentally sustainable digital services and content.

What contributes to the digital carbon footprint?

At the core of environmental sustainability there is a focus on reducing carbon emissions that affect climate change. , Dr. Anders Andae predicted that, if communication technology were evaluated as a country, it would have the 4th biggest carbon footprint by 2025, surpassed by China, India, and the U.S. What creates the most carbon emissions in digital services is the amount of energy required to transfer data. Hence, reduced data amounts translate to energy efficiency, which is a key factor when reducing carbon emissions of digital services. When we focus on techniques that reduce energy consumption, it also leads to smaller carbon emissions in the digital world.

When aiming to be more environmentally sustainable, there are a few factors you can consider:

• The amount of data being transferred
• The amount of times the data has to travel

Be purposeful in your design. Less is often more when it comes to environmental sustainability.

The Sustainable Web Manifesto outlines these six principles for digital sustainability