If we’re going to have any chance of solving the multiple environmental crises we now face, we must start by being honest with ourselves. We don’t have an energy production crisis. We do have an energy consumption crisis. We do have a waste production crisis. We consume entirely unsustainable levels of energy, and we create entirely unsustainable levels of waste, and increasing quantities of that waste are highly toxic.

I’ve just been reading an article in Nature about making computing less toxic and energy intense. It’s great to see such initiatives. However, they tend to wrap themselves up in greenwashing language. The article mentions a Green Algorithms calculator. No such thing. There might well be a Less Toxic Algorithms calculator. The article mentions the Green Software Foundation, which is a very important initiative. However, there is no such thing as green software, just like there is no such thing as green technology, or ‘renewable’ energy, for that matter.

All computer technology is toxic. All software is toxic. The technology industry is the opposite of green, if we consider green to mean that which is natural, that which is organic, that which is sustainable. Computer technology is manufactured from finite metals and materials in a way that puts tremendous stresses on the environment. Technology culture is extremely energy intense and materials intense. Stuff gets thrown away and discarded for the most incremental improvements in ‘efficiency’.

Less than 20% of technology is recycled, and that’s not an accident. For planned obsolescence reasons, most technology is designed so that it cannot be easily recycled. Even from the 20% that is recycled, typically you get back about 30% of reusable materials. So, the true ‘circular economy’ rate for modern tech is 5%. This is deliberate. As one of the top iPhone engineers was quoted as saying in Brian Merchant’s excellent book about the iPhone, The One Device, “We weren’t given the mission to make this repairable.” In fact, in subsequent years Apple has done everything it can to destroy the nascent Right to Repair movement.

E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world, and by far the most toxic. In a typical dump, e-waste can be responsible for 70% of the total toxicity. This is a toxicity that will poison the air, water and soil for thousands of years. Millions of poor workers (many of them women and children) are daily poisoned working with e-waste. Their families are poisoned because they live close to these dumps. The Global North dumps huge quantities of e-waste in the Global South. Right now, my old laptop and your old phone are probably poisoning women or children in Ghana or Nigeria, India or Pakistan.

Digital is physical. The Cloud is on the ground. It is great that more people are recognizing the negative environmental impacts of technology. There is lots we can do to minimize the toxic impacts and exponentially growing energy demand. Let’s start by recognizing computer technology for what it is: toxic.

GREENER principles for environmentally sustainable computational science