8.03 – Environmental Issues

Computer Science Revision

Environmental issues are about the impact on the natural world.

Firstly, many computer parts contain finite raw materials:

• Hard Disk Drives contain aluminium, steel, and platinum.
• CPUs contain fibreglass, copper, and gold.
• Game controllers contain plastic, rubber, and lithium.

Extracting these materials uses lots of energy, creates pollution, and depletes scarce natural resources.

Here are some more environmental issues relating to energy consumption:

• All computing devices require energy, most of which is generated by burning fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.
• The Internet relies on servers in big data centres all around the world: it is estimated that these data centers used around 300 billion kWh of energy in 2022.
• With technology becoming more and more prevalent in our everyday lives, this figure is only going to grow over the new few years.

Here are some issues about E-waste:

• Modern devices have a very short lifetime, and so 20-50 million tonnes of E-waste is created each year.
• Many manufacturers often discourage users from keeping their old devices by making them less repairable.
• Also, many older devices can be hard to recycle because of problems like explosive lithium batteries.

A lot of E-waste also ends up in landfill in poorer countries. What is the impact of this?

Tap/click to reveal Toxic chemicals from the E-waste can leak into groundwater and harm wildlife.