In December 2006 I wrote a feature for MacUser UK on the environmental
impact of computers, and in particular Macs. MacUser doesn’t put its
features online, so I’ve decided to put this one up. This is the full,
unedited version, so any mistakes are mine rather than MacUser’s.Some of the rights for this article belong to Dennis Publishing: please do not republish this article anywhere else.
Everything that we do has some kind of impact on the environment,
from breathing through to burning millions of tonnes of crude oil.
However, one of the cultural trends of humankind during the 21st
Century is a striving to reduce this impact, and preserve our natural
environment as much as possible.
Although the detrimental effects of large scale industry like cars has been known and closely followed for decades, a more recent centre of attention has been that icon of the last twenty years, the personal computer. Computer makes have come under attach from environmental campaigners for their manufacturing processes, while computer users have started to wonder whether using a computer – particularly one that’s on 24 hours a day, seven days a week – is worth the undoubted effects on the environment.
Apple in particular has been the subject of some dedicated campaigning, in particular from Greenpeace. Over the past year, the veteran environmental group has attacked Apple, claiming it uses hazardous substances in Macs – substances that other manufacturers have abandoned.
But what’s the truth about the impact that our addiction to computers has on the environment? Is computing sustainable, or will there one day be a crunch, when we’re forced to either slow down our pace of technological change or just abandon computers completely? And where does the responsibility lie: with manufacturers who churn out ever-faster machines that must be replaced every three years, or with consumers greedy for the latest and greatest PC? And, should the environmentally-conscious consumer be choosing something other than Apple if they’re looking for the greenest PC?
The problem
Think of environmental problems from technology, and you probably think of how its used. We’re used the the idea that some cars, for example, are “greener” than others because of the amount of fuel they use and the emissions they release.
In the same way, computer users might think of the environmental impact of computers in the same way. Although computers don’t need to be taken to the petrol station and filled with millions of years old hydrocarbons, they do consume power – some more than others.
For most home and small office computer users, power consumption is a relatively trivial issue. The 25W that a Mac mini consumes, for example, makes it significantly less energy-hungry than an average 30in LCD TV (around 45W) and a lot less than the largest plasma screen (which measure in the hundreds of Watts). Plus, virtually all modern computers come with power saving modes, which use tricks like lowering the CPU cycle speed and flipping monitors into standby modes to reduce power consumption even further.
But, as with cars, considering only the power consumption is
actually a very limited way of thinking of the environmental impact of
products. Power, after all, can be generated in sustainable ways,
whether that’s through using an energy producer that supplies “green”
energy or through a solar panel on your roof.
In fact, much of the
environmental impact of a computer comes when it’s not in your hands,
before it’s even in that lovely box you bought it in, and after you
replace it with another model. As we’ll see, the biggest and least
easily-solved environmental issues with computers are connected to
their manufacture, and disposal.
Let’s look at the beginning of the life of your computer – its manufacture. According to Eric Williams, assistant professor in the school of sustainability at Arizona State University and co-author of “Computers and the environment”, the total energy used in producing a desktop computer and 17in monitor is 6400 megajoules – which, considering an average lifespan of four years, means that 81% of the entire power consumed by a PC over its life is taken up in making it in the first place.
Once you take this massive amount of power consumed in production into account, it turns the PC from one of the most environmentally-friendly electronic devices in the home to one of the most power-hungry – Williams estimates that, including the power cost of manufacture, a computer eats up 1.3 times as much energy as a fridge per year, averaged out over the life span of the product.
Power, of course, is only one part of the equation. Every product also takes resources to create, above and beyond those that end up in the product itself. For example, Williams estimates that a single 32MB DRAM chip – which weighs a mere 2g – requires 1.6Kg of fossil fuels, 72g of associated chemicals, and a whopping 32Kg of water to create. Pile all the resources used in the creation of even a Mac mini next to it and you’d need rather a large room to keep your computer in.
And these figures are themselves only estimates based on good quality engineering. According to Zeina Al-Hajj, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, the figures may be higher. “the problem with the electronics industry that access to information and data is not that easy. There are no figures in relation to how much chemicals are used or even how much e-waste is generated [in manufacture]”.
If a computers manufacture is where much of the power and resources of its lifespan are used up, then the end of its useful life is where the greatest potential pollution menace lies. Each computer includes a huge range of metals, plastics and other materials, some of which are potentially toxic and many of which require specialist handling if they are to be recycled. While much of a computer is composed of recyclable materials like aluminium, iron and plastics, there are many more obscure chemicals inside your PC, like germanium, tantalum, mercury and arsenic in trace amounts.
Worse still, the scale of the problem is very hard to judge. According to Zeina Al-Hajj, “a study made by the UN Environmental Program revealing that 20-50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated globally every year. This is a very rough estimation and it does represent the gap of data. Other studies from various countries reveal that e-waste forms about 5% of the municipal waste and is one of the fastest growing waste streams.”
H Scott Matthews, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University, agrees that there is little data on how many computers simply end their lives in municipal waste dumps, and how many are properly dealt with. “No-one can really say how many computers are recycled, sitting in houses, or landfills. The only data that exists is sales data of new units, the numbers currently in households, etc.. The computer/recycling industry tracks volumes of waste processed (eg pounds) and not really ‘units’. And besides there is much cannibalization of subcomponents (eg swapping out working drives or memory) that makes tracking units impossible. So any numbers, including ours, on the problem are at best guesses and speculation.”
Where Matthews and Greenpeace disagree is on the potential environmental problems caused by the “unsafe” disposal of old PCs. According to Matthews, “there are toxic substances in computers, especially older units, and even in newer units, but if these metals or substances escaped both the manufacturing bonds of the machines and the confines of the landfill, and got into say drinking water, would anything bad happen? I have seen studies on people breaking up CRTs and then doing tests on the residues in water and finding only slightly risky results. And that was in a controlled environment where the substances were directly able to get into water. While from a waste management perspective I care a lot about filling landfills with computers, from a risk perspective I lose no sleep at all. Of course, risk is really the important issue.”
A bigger question over safe disposal comes from the Western habit of shipping waste overseas, and in particular to developing countries, for recycling. Although some developing world facilities follow Western standards of waste disposal, not all do – and once computer waste is overseas, tracking what happens to it becomes more difficult.
What is certain is that some developing world waste disposal facilities fall into the category of what’s often called “backyard recycling”. Here, parts of waste that can be usefully recycled, like the metals, are stripped off and the rest of the waste is either abandoned or burned – both of which can be environmentally hazardous.
What’s being done
Even if there are doubts over the scale of the problem of waste disposal, governments and international organisations are already taking the problem more seriously. According to Lone Mikkelson, spokesman for Stavros Dimas, European Commission for the environment, Europe is taking action on electronic waste. In June 2006, the Restriction on the Use of Certain Hazourdous Substances directive (known as RoHS) came into force in the UK, while in 2002, the Commission passed a directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (known as WEEE) that places a responsibility on producers to take back and safely dispose of old products.
Although RoHS is already in place, WEEE was not implemented into UK law until January 2007, despite the deadline for incorporation long having passed. Computer makers will then have a legal duty to ensure that old products are collected and disposed of properly, including recycling many components.
In a statement on the implementation of WEEE, Malcolm Wicks, minister for science and innovation at the Department of Trade and Industry, claimed that WEEE would make a significant difference. “By providing a way of ensuring that electronic waste no longer has to go to landfills, manufacturers and importers will have the responsibility to ensure that they plan for both their new and existing products to be recycled rather than dumped,” he said.
However, don’t expect to be able to simply call Apple or Dell and
get them to collect your old computer. According to Paul Rice, a
partner at legal firm Pinsent Masons specialising in environmental law,
“it will be similar to the laws about packaging waste. Companies joined
schemes which negotiated with local authorities and waste management
companies to collect and recycle material on behalf of members.”
In
the world’s largest PC market – the US – there is no equivalent to WEEE
on a nationwide scale, although some States are attempting to implement
similar schemes. However, this is one instance where globalization has
a positive benefit. As H Scott Matthews puts it, “companies like Dell
or Apple don’t want to sell different machines in different parts of
the world – so the WEEE directive and others like it make a ‘least
common denominator’ kind of scheme where of course it makes sense to
think about the highest environmental standards worldwide, and making
products that meet these tougher standards worldwide, instead of making
a ‘good’ product in Europe, and a ‘bad’ product for everyone else.”
While states and inter-governmental organisations are taking action at the end of the computer’s life, what of the beginnings? Obviously, it is in the interests of computer makers to use less resources when making PCs, as this would allow them to reduce their own costs and increase product margins. But, in chip manufacture in particular, there is currently little prospect of significantly reducing resource and power usage.
The reason for this is down to the physics of processor manufacture. Because silicon dioxide – one of the main substances used in chips – forms very slowly at room temperature, the wafers that chips are printed on need to be heated to around 1000 degrees C, which consumes an immense amount of power and water (needed for cooling). Although there has recently been some progress in research on producing silicon dioxide at lower temperatures – most notably at the University of Cambridge – it will take years for these processes to make the leap from academic study to manufacture.
Corporate and consumer responsibility
If manufacturing is likely to remain power and resource intensive for some time to come, what other things can companies do to minimise the environmental impact of computers – and what can you do to pressurize computer makers into “doing the right thing”?
According to Greenpeace’s Zeina Al-Haj, “manufacturers can do a lot to reduce the environmental impact of the electronics industry by designing products that contain less and less chemicals, products that last longer and therefore do not become waste every 18 month or so and that are easily upgradeable (in case there is a development in software which is the case with PCs) and products that can easily be reused and recycled.”
H Scott Matthews underlined the point that the length of life of the PC is very important: “Product lifetimes matter. If computers lasted even 50% longer than they currently do, the amount of obsolete computers would of course go down by 50%.” However, he cast doubt on whether the economics of the market could encourage manufacturers to go down this route. “Unfortunately, there are incentives by the OS and CPU makers to get us to upgrade all the time. The product lifetime versus profit trade-off makes extending lifetimes a losing decision if you are in the business of making computers. I cant blame Apple for wanting to make money.”
There appears to be no easy way around the simple equation that short product life cycles will always increase the profits of computer companies. After all, selling you a completely new machine ever two years will always be a better profit-making method than selling you one every five years. This means that the onus falls more on the consumer to make the right choice, both in terms of how often they buy a new computer, which computer to buy, and how they get rid of it in the end. As Al-Haj puts it, “for consumers, the golden rule is to use their products till the end of their lives an not simply until a new, hip, cool design is in the market. People should re-use products among themselves wherever possible.”
Matthews cited a personal experience of how computer makers are effectively discouraged from producing long-lifetime products. “back in one a study on landfill volumes in 1997, we called out Apple as a progressive company because at the time we had the Power Mac 7500/8500 series that had processor daughtercards, making upgrades easy and affordable. It was a platform on which people could feasibly just keep upgrading equipment, extending the life, without needing to buy a new one. I upgraded mine several times, and lasted for 5 years. Apple didn’t make a dime off of me after the first one I bought, so they lost the profits of selling me two other computers in that time.”
According to Greenpeace, consumer pressure can be the most effective weapon in pushing manufacturers towards making greener PCs, by, for example, buying PCs that can be upgraded. Machines that are too old to be useful to one user should be reused by other users who have less power-hungry needs. Plus, of course, consumers can vote with their wallets and purchase PCs from manufacturers which encourage good environmental practices.
Apple and other companies
Does Apple measure up well in this area? Certainly if you consider recent publicity, you’d think that it doesn’t. This year Greenpeace started a campaign highlighting what it claimed was Apple’s poor environmental record, even going as far as to have space at the 2006 Mac Expo – and, the organisation claims, being booted out for taking their protests too far. The campaign largely focusses on what it claims is the continued use of toxic chemicals in its products.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn’t an assessment that Apple agrees with. Alan Hely, European corporate communications director for the company, put its case: “We disagree with Greenpeace’s rating and the criteria they chose. Apple has a strong environmental track record and has led the industry in restricting and banning toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium, as well as many BFRs (brominated flame retardants). We have also completely eliminated CRT monitors,which contain lead,from our product line. Apple desktops, notebooks and displays each score best-in-class in the new EPA ranking system EPEAT, which uses international standards set by IEEE.”
Eric Williams thinks that Apple may have a point. ““The NGOs [like Greenpeace] have an entirely take on this, because they view the environmental impacts of computer through a very different lens. To them, the toxic content of electronics is paramount. Lead, for example, is an ‘evil’ substance in their eyes, so any company that works harder to recycle or take lead out gets better marks. However, this is not nearly as important as it might seem at first sight, because a great deal of the toxics generated in backyard recycling are generated in the recycling process (e.g. dioxins), and are not in the product itself. Designing a computer that is safe to pile up and burn in your backyard, an engineer would tell you, is a bit of a challenge. So even if you removed 100% of lead and all other toxics from computers, backyard recycling impacts would still be huge.”
But Matthews thinks that at least part of the reason that Apple has been highlighted may be changes within Apple itself. “Apple gets a really bad rap on environmental issues. You know what? It deserves it. Years ago Apple had a model environmental team for both assisting internal designers, tracking environmental initiatives around the world, and so on – it was a leader. Dell had basically no presence there at all until a few years ago. Now Dell is really in the leadership role Apple used to occupy.”
However, Williams points out that,despite this ceding of the technical leadership role, Apple is perhaps getting more than its fair share of criticism. “From my perspective, none of the computer manufacturers are doing much to address the environmental impacts of the life cycle of their product, so I can’t really point at Apple as a ‘bad boy’. The reason is that most green activities they’re doing aren’t really targeting the important issues. Other than the question-mark of the brominated flame retardants, it seems to me the most relevant impacts of IT equipment are use of chemicals and energy in manufacturing, energy use during operation and impacts of backyard recycling in developing countries.”
According to Williams, almost no manufacturers are doing anything to extend the lifespan of their products, which, he claims “is probably less about technical specs for the machine and more about making it easier for the user to resell and reuse if they want.” On energy use, there is little to differentiate the different machine makers: “everybody does Energy Star [the US standard for energy efficiency] but, other than for laptops, not much more.”
What’s clear about the environmental impact of computers is that there are no quick fixes, and no easy answers. Consumers can place pressure on manufactures to cut potentially toxic chemicals from new machines, but this does not deal with the hundreds of millions of existing computers that are currently either gathering dust in attics or lying rusting in landfills. New machines will continue to develop in terms of their energy efficiency, but even buying the most energy-efficient computer won’t reduce the vast amount of power that is used in making it in the first place. And although European legislation means that computers in Britain are likely to be safely disposed of, those in the world’s biggest market – the US – will continue to be dealt with in a piecemeal way.
However, there is one step that virtually everyone agrees will help: breaking the fast upgrade cycle that many consumers embark on, buying a new computer every couple of years in order to keep up with the latest and greatest trend. So, next time you’re tempted by a new Mac because it has a processor that’s twice as fast as your existing machine, think twice about buying it.
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