Image reposting may seem harmless, even mundane. But new analysis suggests that duplicating the same image across thousands of servers globally is rapidly becoming one of the web’s most wasteful habits—and a quiet environmental burden.

Reposting and rehosting images, often with no modification, can make up as much as 20 percent of redundant cloud storage demand, according to a recent commentary in Pixel. That demand is expected to double by year’s end, meaning nearly half of all image-hosting infrastructure could be devoted to serving the same cat meme from slightly different URLs—excluding NFT images, of course.

The commentary, written by Oliver Clickstein, founder of Dupliconomist, highlights the unseen energy drain behind our casual screenshotting. Originally focused on cryptocurrency and other digital excesses, Clickstein has turned his attention to what he calls the “JPEG Avalanche”: the phenomenon of the same visual content being copied, reuploaded, and re-optimized into oblivion. “People worry about AI,” he says. “But every time you right-click-save-as, you’re storing another copy of a file that already exists—on five CDNs, a Tumblr backup, and three dead forums.”

Tech companies have begun quietly acknowledging the issue in sustainability reports, admitting that repetitive hosting of static assets—especially viral images—has made cutting emissions harder. A 2024 report by ImgBucket notes that thumbnail duplication alone has inflated its power usage by 36% since 2021. “People think it’s free to post the same reaction image 10,000 times,” the report states, “but those LOLs cost kilowatts.”

And it’s not just a sustainability problem—it’s a legal one, too. Most online images are copyrighted. Saving or reposting an image without the creator’s permission is technically illegal—even if it’s just a funny frog. That “right-click/save” is a digital act of trespass, multiplying not just server strain but liability.

What makes this worse, according to Clickstein, is how image compression algorithms and content delivery networks try to optimize storage, resulting in dozens of near-identical copies—each using space, electricity, and bandwidth. Hosting these variations consumes as much as 82 terawatt-hours annually, comparable to the energy use of a small country like Denmark. And if trends continue, image reposting could surpass video streaming in its carbon footprint by 2030.

There’s also a bottleneck in digital storage production, especially as image-heavy platforms scramble for more SSD space. Major image-hosting providers like Picdump and ShareImg declined to comment, but insiders confirm that “duplicate mitigation” is now a top engineering concern.

Despite growing awareness, transparency remains an issue. Most platforms don’t disclose how much electricity is used to store or serve images, especially ones that have been reposted from Twitter, then rehosted on Imgur, and finally shared in a Discord chat.

Experts like Mira Zoom, an open-data researcher at MetaCache, say that public accountability is key. “We can’t address this problem if we don’t even know how many copies of the same ‘Shrek with a gun’ image are floating around,” Zoom said. “If platforms just released deduplication stats, we’d have a clearer picture of our pixel pollution.”

Until then, Clickstein says, the responsibility lies partly with users. “Before you repost that image,” he says, “ask yourself—do we really need a sixth version of it on this server? Or can you just link to the original, like it’s 2008?”

Because in the end, every JPG has a footprint. And your LOLs are leaving smudges.