Climate Action 2012-2013
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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY<br />
A SUSTAINABLE<br />
DIRECTION FOR ICT<br />
By Sarah O’Brien, Director of Outreach and Communications, EPEAT and the Green<br />
Electronics Council<br />
The worldwide adoption and proliferation of ICT products is having a rapidly increasing<br />
environmental impact. Making ICT more sustainable requires a rethinking of processes, materials and<br />
supply chain management.<br />
Information and Communications Technology<br />
(ICT) is at the centre of modern life, from<br />
work functionality to social communication<br />
and entertainment, and its penetration of every<br />
aspect of life shows no sign of slowing. Handheld<br />
devices now do the work formerly performed<br />
by supercomputers, and ICT tools have moved<br />
from luxury items for consumers in the developed<br />
world to basic tools for a broad swath of people<br />
around the globe.<br />
Demand for ICT devices and services will<br />
grow exponentially as education, commerce,<br />
government and other sectors increasingly rely<br />
on electronically mediated communications,<br />
as products become less costly, and as a larger<br />
share of a growing global population obtains the<br />
material wealth to afford them.<br />
PREVENTING FALSE TRADE-OFFS<br />
Information technology can significantly<br />
contribute to global sustainability through<br />
support for increased efficiency and electronic<br />
substitution for physical processes (telepresence<br />
instead of travel, for example) across multiple<br />
sectors. However, without fundamental rethinking<br />
of the current business model based on continual<br />
creation and disposal of short-lived products,<br />
the environmental impacts of ICT-related<br />
resource extraction, production, shipping, energy<br />
consumption and disposal will rapidly increase.<br />
This rapid increase in impact reduces the net<br />
sustainability gains from ICT.<br />
The fundamental challenge to ICT<br />
manufacturers is how to meet burgeoning<br />
market demand in the face of increasing<br />
resource constraints, and how to reduce the<br />
environmental impacts of products at all stages<br />
of life. In brief – how can the ICT sector be<br />
transformed to supply vital services to several<br />
billion humans over future decades, without<br />
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