Impact of your iPhone, computer, TV… the list goes on

Jan 3

Think about what your digital touchpoints are throughout a typical day… spoiler alert: it’s basically every touchpoint. Wake up via phone alarm clock or Alexa, turn on the TV to catch the morning news, drive the digitized car to work, work on a computer for 8 hours, check phone —way too many times throughout the day, get home, watch TV.

Our day-to-day lives are encompassed by technology that arguably enriches our lives. Everything digital we do has three parts: the internet, the product/service you’re using via the internet, and the hardware to access the internet to access the product/service. Let’s dive into the impact of these parts, it may surprise you!

The Internet

Here are three things you may have never thought about before:
1. The internet is a physical thing, as elusive as it is, and like all physical things, it has a carbon footprint and uses physical materials from natural resources to exist, separate from the devices we use to access it.

2. The internet is always on whether or not you’ve unplugged your access to it.

3. More than half of us humans use it globally and 85.8% of Americans use it, that’s just over 313 million American humans.

So what are these physical things of the internet you may ask? Isn’t it all just up in a cloud somewhere? Well, no. The internet is made up of things like server farms (the cloud) and fiber optic cables (transmission networks, like railroads but with wires).

Streaming

We globally stream stuff like music, movies, shows, and porn, apparently, a ton of porn —so much porn that it creates as much CO2 as the country of Belgium! To whom is watching all that porn?? An answer for another time I guess...
Good news: streaming a movie creates less physical waste and emissions than when we all went to blockbuster to rent a movie.

Bad News: more of us are streaming than ever outweighing the benefits of streaming over
DVD rentals.

Light at the end of the tunnel: energy use of streaming is getting immensely more efficient year-over-year because data centers are getting more efficient; that makes the most business $ense for cloud providers.

Communicating

Having a pocket-sized computer is the best thing since sliced bread and these devices are never going away—hopefully. But did you know:
• A 1-minute phone call emits 57g CO2e.
• 1 Text emits 0.014g CO2e. How many texts do you think you send a day?
• 1 Email emits 4g CO2e. How many emails do you think you send a day?
• 1 Email with an attachment emits 50g CO2e (which begs the question, do you really need to attach that PDF or can you link it from your drive?)

Looking at the numbers here, we may conclude that texts are the lowest-impact and most efficient way to communicate (in more ways than one). Just some food for thought...

Devices

A recent study revealed that buying a new smartphone has an equal carbon footprint to using an older phone for a decade!⁠ The impact of our modern technological world is not just about carbon however, think of what those devices are made of.
Circular Moment: The longer you use one phone the better. Before you upgrade your phone, can you replace the battery instead? Fix the screen? Using your smartphone for three years (instead of the average of two years) will have a considerable improvement on reducing your ecological footprint.⁠ Here is a great article that takes a deep dive into our mobile devices.
⁠
Smartphones, tablets, laptops, computers, TVs, so many devices, and where do they all go to die? Short answer, landfills. Solve: Technology trade-in programs are a great option for recycling any of your devices to keep them out of a landfill. Apple, Samsung and Google all have phone trade-in programs and some even kick back some money to your wallet. No matter what digital cult you buy into they most likely have technology trade-in programs. There are also third-party providers like Eco-Cell whom recycle any of your old gadgets including cell phones, tablets, MP3 players, and handheld gaming systems.