You are Never Alone

In a recent article titled “Green IT not helping climate change” Richard Hawkins, Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, says there is no evidence that information technologies necessarily reduce our environmental footprint. His research will provide input into the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) initiative on IT and sustainability at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark later this year.

He points out that

• digital technologies require a lot of energy to manufacture.
• eventually they create a huge pile of ‘electronic junk’, much of it highly toxic.
• they also use a lot of energy to run.
• IT producers … [are] using the environmental footprint as a marketing tool.
• the environmental implications – positive as well as negative – are often overlooked.

That doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t still be looking at the implementation of green ICT measures in our educational institutions, doing our bit, but the issues are much bigger than perhaps has been recognised so far.