Green Computing and Future Generations

Green Computing

Limits to Growth

E-Waste

It has become increasingly clear that much of society needs to implement more sustainable practices to avoid many of problems that the next generations will face. These challenges will include many ecological and social factors. If the world continues consuming resources at its current pace, non-renewable resources will eventually run out. Also, considering the exponential population growth of humans, we are beginning to approach the natural limitations that the Earth's natural systems can support. As such, it behooves us, as a species, to make the most efficient and effective use of our resources as possible. One aspect to this collective effort to adopt more sustainable practices will involve computing.

There are many aspects to computing that need to be examined through the lens of sustainability. One aspect deals with energy consumption. Computers are responsible for the consumption of massive amounts of energy. Thus one of the frontiers for "Green" computing will be improving the efficiency of energy usage without compromising the computing power and end-user experience. However, there are also many other issues to be considered with computing and sustainability such as the massive amount of e-waste that is accumulating is some regions of the planet. One factor that is responsible for this accumulation is the relatively short life-cycles of electronics and computers. Another challenge that "green" computing will have to confront is the entire lifecycle of the products from creation to being recycled, while looking for ways to use resources more efficiently to reduce waste. This paper will focus on some of the key concerns of "green" computing that will face all future generations of computers.

Limits to Growth

For most of human history, we have conflated consumption with a better quality of life. For example, purchasing a washing machine was an effective solution to freeing up some of the manual labor chores found in most households. Many women in the household suddenly found that they had more time on their hands. The automobile gave us a new level of mobility to travel around freely. Many of the previous technological breakthroughs have made massive improvements to the average person's quality of life. As a result of this trend, many people view consumption and well-being as something of the same phenomenon.

However, as Tim Jackson points out in his book, Prosperity without Growth, consumption (or GDP) longer a suitable metric for prosperity (Jackson, 2009). We have reached a point in which additional consumption actually does not add the same kind of value to our lives that it did in previous generations -- in fact, in some cases, additional consumption can actually be counterproductive to well-being. As a result of this trend, researchers such as Dunne (2005) have argued that the aesthetics roles of electronic products for example have a significant potential to go beyond traditional concepts of value and enrich our lives in new ways (Dunne, 2005). The next generations of green computing hardware and software products will incorporate more design relative to the overall value of the experience that a user with a product.

E-Waste

Another relevant factor to the future of "green" computing will be the steady accumulation of e-waste. The growth of electronic waste is expected to rise exponentially in the next few years as more and more individuals discard their used computing devices. According to a report published in 'The Guardian' on December 2013, the volume of electronic waste is estimated to increase at a rate of 33% in the next few years (Hester & Harrison, 2009). The report, quoting UN's 'Step initiative', the combined weight of all the e-waste would be the same as eight of the great Egyptian pyramids put together (Vidal, 2013). The accumulation of e-waste degrades many environmental systems as well as can cause health implications of local residents. Therefore, the future of green computing will have to deal with this problem in some fashion.

There are many possible scenarios to address the accumulation of e-waste. Much of the content of the products is actually recyclable. E-waste contains metals like aluminum, copper, gold, silver, plastics, and ferrous metals are present in e-waste and can be taken out after dismantling and reused and fresh metals. However, many of the processes to recycle these materials are not cost effective. As a result, it is still cheaper in the market to purchase new raw materials than to purchase materials that have previously been recycled. Some of the waste can undoubtedly just be held until such time that the recycling process because more cost effective. However, this does not address the environmental concerns or the concerns to human health in the meantime.

The lifecycle for computers and appliances have become shorter and shorter over the years. For example, cell phones now have roughly an eighteen month lifecycle and they are purposefully designed this way. The average cellular service contact is two years in most countries and providing a new phone can be used as a marketing tactic to maintain their client base. This system maybe optimized for profitability, but it does not consider the externalities that the accumulation of e-waste which has the potential to cause many damaging effects to the environment. A long product lifecycle would be an optimal solution to address this problem, however it stand in contradiction to the business worlds desire to fuel consumption and sell new products. As such, there is no clear solution in sight.