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