by Janus Boye
Every time you do a Facebook post, tweet, do a search or check a webpage, you create pollution. You might not think of it like that, but once you do, it is striking that while many of us know to reduce our usage of plastics, it’s less the case with electronics, where many rush to get the latest gadget and perhaps even think that something in the cloud is good for the environment.
Gerry McGovern is known as the inventor of the Top Task framework, the author of eight books and his relentless focus on helping organizations become more customer centric on the Web.
Gerry McGovern built his career on helping large organisations deliver a better digital customer experience. Recently, when reviewing his career, Gerry realised that his obsession with simplification could also benefit the environment, which led him to write World Wide Waste, a book about how digital is killing our planet and what we can do about it.
In a recent member conference call, we held an informal book club where Gerry generously shared his latest insights based on the book and in his usual style, also a few provocative insights, notably on how data is mostly unmanaged and wasted and how big tech profits. We also touched on what it actually takes to manufacture the device you are reading this on and the decreased life expectancy of household appliances and much more.
Below you’ll find my notes from the call, and further down you can find the slides and the recording. Let’s begin with understanding the scale of the problem.
There’s just too much electronic waste
World Wide Waste by Gerry McGovern was published in 2020
Gerry set the stage in our call with some staggering and thought-provoking numbers on our carbon footprint and all the waste that’s created at the moment.
Specifically he opened with a story on mining, illustrating how we will soon be extracting the equivalent of a Mount Everest each and every year. The enormous consumption of materials needed to build our large and small devices, including cell phones, tablets, washing machines and electronic cars etc., is absolutely staggering.
Right now, we’re extracting about 100 billion tons a year. By 2050, it’s estimated we will be extracting 170 billion tons and Mount Everest is about 150 billion tons.
We are simply extracting too much from the planet and the sad fact is that most of it goes to waste. It’s not sustainable.
He used the example of the smartphone. A wonderful invention where many rushes to not stay more than 1 year or 1 model behind the latest and greatest. In the call, he mentioned that 90 kg of stone, cravel etc. are required for those 80g of minerals used in a smartphone. A typical smartphone weighs about 160 g, with 80 of those grams being mined minerals.
Below I’m weaving in a bit more details to build the case from his informative page on phone waste:
A typical smartphone will contain up to 60 materials and elements, including tin, iron, plastic, lithium, silicon, copper, nickel, aluminium, silica, potassium, graphite, manganese, aluminum, tantalum, gold, silver, lead, magnesium and bromine. Producing these materials results in lots of solid and liquid waste. This waste builds up onsite in enormous dumps, sometimes several square kilometres in area. Often, these materials are mined in countries that have poor or nonexistent safety standards.
And further down on the same page, you can get a sense of the numbers:
Out of the 17 rare earth metals, 16 can be found in one smartphone or another. Your phone would not be able to vibrate without neodymium and dysprosium, while terbium and dysprosium help produce those vibrant colours on the screen. Sometimes referred to as “technology metals,” they are usually found in very small concentrations in the earth. Producing one ton of a rare earth metal will typically create 2,000 tons of waste.
Before we even get to the problem with data centres, consider also the immense waste that is happening when it comes to files. According to Gerry, most IT departments are chaos land, when it comes to managing files and that’s also why storage options like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive have become so popular, as you can simply store it all. The reality, as shown on the graph below, is that after just a few days only about 5% of all data gets reused. The rest just sits there, takes up storage and still consumes carbon, while big tech makes money on it.
Graph as shared in the member call that shows that after just around 10 days less than 10% of all files get reused. The rest just sits there.
Technology is not getting us out of the problem
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, but also backed with years of research, Gerry made it quite clear that we shouldn’t look for technology to help us. As he said:
Technology has never led to reduction in energy consumption
In particular data centres are big sinners. According to Gerry, data centres in Ireland consume 14% of the power, while all rural households consume only 12%. Data centres are also really thirsty and drink our water and, quite troubling data centres are not built to last very long. If you are lucky, they will last 20 years, but that is really nothing compared to the lifespan of traditional factories or offices. Again, the result is more waste.
The problem also goes for electric cars, which Gerry made quite clear are not going to save us. Similar to smartphones, ecars require electronics in vast amounts.
As he said, we need to be more like the Dutch or Scandinavian countries and use the bike instead and just generally consume less.
To illustrate how electronics can make things worse, he also turned to our household appliances. He shared a slide that showed how modern washing machines unfortunately now have a shorter life expectancy than washing machines 15 - 20 years. What changed? We added digital, sensors, computers and displays.
Before moving onto what we can do about all of this, Gerry also introduced the concept of what he called ‘vampire power’. That is the incredible amount of power used by inactive devices, such as your TV that’s on stand by, your Alexa, your toaster, your smartphone that charged for an hour, but you left it in there all night and so on. In the US, it’s estimated that this “vampire power” can account for up to 20% of a typical electricity bill.
What can we do to reduce digital waste?
During the call, Gerry made clear that it is the tech vendors which have a huge responsibility here.
Still, as individuals there’s much we can do, most notably keep your digital devices for as long as possible.
When you are working with software, using your laptop, creating that webpage, storing that image, etc. Gerry encouraged us to make a simple routine to also delete something. Recognising that everything that is stored has a carbon footprint, we can all do our part by cleaning it from time to time. He put it well in this recent tweet:
Gerry listed these three suggestions for each of us when it comes to hardware:
Hold onto your digital device for as long as possible (at least five years). Alternatively donate your device to someone else who can benefit from it
Get your device repaired if it breaks.
Buy from a brand that can show that its manufacturing practices are fair and ethical, and that is genuinely building products that last, that are easy to repair and easy to recycle.
In terms of the #2 - what happens if it breaks? There’s the right to repair movement, which is really grassroots advocacy from the US, which has influenced recent Right to Repair legislation in the US and elsewhere. The problem here is that many vendors, notably Apple, have manufactured their devices, so if they break, it’s either impossible to repair them or the repair cost is so high, that it’s almost not worth it. To quote Gerry:
Apple resisted right to repair for as long as they could and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally embrace it
Gerry also made it clear that we shouldn’t blame the consumer for wanting new equipment. That’s what happened with plastic, where it became an individual problem, rather than something the industry should mostly solve. Lobby groups are busy, but with digital waste, we can all do something to help raise awareness and suggest better solutions to our favourite vendors.
During the call, Fairphone and Framework was mentioned. Fairphone is an electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones with the goal of having a lower environmental footprint, while Framework manufactures a high-performance, thin and light notebook designed to last.
In the meeting chat Crewdle was also mentioned as a vendor that offers green and secure video conferencing. On that note, and during the closing Q&A of the call, James Cannings from MSQ in London, made the suggestion to introduce ‘green mode’ in Microsoft Teams, Netflix and other video and streaming services. The green mode could be a lower resolution and less energy demanding way to browse movie selections, or a lower quality video image from my laptop while using Teams when somebody else is presenting.
If the big vendors would start to implement simple ideas like these, it would go a long way towards reducing the carbon footprint.
Learn more about achieving digital growth in environmentally friendly ways
Since the book came out in 2020, Gerry has been on tour virtually to raise awareness about digital waste and what we can do about it. Here’s just two articles:
Irish Times: Digital pollution: ‘We have a pandemic of data and 90% of it is crap’
Shaping Design: Designing a greener web: An interview with Gerry McGovern
Gerry has also launched an interesting World Wide Waste podcast.
To explore sustainability further, we’ve launched a new UX Connect conference happening in Aarhus in June. It will be back in 2023!
On this blog, you might also enjoy these past posts:
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) or lean back and enjoy the recording below.