Environmental Issues

• Devices have a huge environmental impact
• A smartphone - it's made of materials that have to be mined from the Earth, when it's used it consumes energy, and when it's thrown away it could end up on a landfill site
• When we make devices we use up natural resources
• Electronic devices contain lots of raw materials:

  • Plastics (which are used for casing and other parts) come from crude oil
  • Devices also contain many metals like gold, silver, copper, mercury, palladium, platinum and indium. Many of these materials only occur naturally in tiny quantities
• Extracting these materials uses lots of energy, creates pollution and depletes scarce natural resources
• All the billions of devices in the world today are consuming energy in the form of electricity - a lot of it
• Most electricity is made using non-renewable resources like coal, oil and gas. Extracting these resources and producing electricity in power stations causes lots of pollution including greenhouse gases
• All computers generate heat and require colling. The powerful servers used by businesses and the Internet are a particular problem. They're very power hungry and require special air-conditioned rooms to keep them cool. That means using even more energy and more pollution
• Devices waste a lot of energy. Servers normally only use a small proportion of their processing power. People often leave their smartphones, desktops and laptops idle. This means these devices are using a lot energy without actually doing anything
• There are several ways to reduce the amount of energy wasted by devices:

  • Virtual servers are software-based servers rather than real machines. Multiple virtual servers can run on one physical server, so the physical server can run at full capacity
  • Most modern devices include sleep and hibernation modes to reduce their power consumption when they're idle
  • Don't leave electronic devices on standby
• When we throw away devices we create loads of e-waste
• E-waste is a huge problem - the world creates more than 50 million tonnes of e-waste every year. Many modern devices have a very short life before they're discarded - either because they break or because people want to upgrade
• Device manufacturers and retailers are part of this problem

  • They provide short warranties
  • They have pricing policies that make it cheaper to replace than to repair
  • They use marketing to convince people to upgrade
• The Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive was created to tackle the e-waste problem. The WEEE has rules for disposing of e-waste safely, to promote reuse and recycling
• To cut costs a lot of e-waste is sent to certain African and Asian countries where regulations are less strict. Here, most of it ends up in landfill and can be a hazard - toxic chemicals can leak into the groundwater and harm wildlife