Is Your Computer Green?

Every one of us uses a computer today, but how many of us are giving a thought to the environmental impact of computers?

Keep in mind the fact that technology is constantly improving, evolving, getting more advanced, becoming smaller, niftier, cooler, more convenient….

The reasons why we keep changing, upgrading and thereby creating more and more rubbish for the environment to take care of are literally endless.

Computers and the monitors that we use do contain significant amounts of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium etc which are hazardous both at the time of their manufacture (to those involved in the manufacture) as well as to the environment when these are all dumped in landfills which will logically be their resting place.

It isn’t just the fact that you actually end up creating a lot of junk to be disposed of when you upgrade and change your PC and other ‘out dated’ stuff, computers also have a lot of other ways in which they impact the environment.

Consider these facts about the environmental impact of computers and computer use:

• The average desktop computer along with the monitor requires about 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture according to some estimates. This is way more than the resource requirement for consumer durables such as refrigerators and even cars. The cost to the environment is in terms of the fossil fuels used, water consumed, and the chemicals and other materials used, to say nothing of the pollution that the manufacturing process and various stages of manufacture and assembly caused.
• Then there is the fact that use of a computer uses up additional resources such as electricity which is again a limited resource whose depletion or the increase in whose use will inevitably have an environmental impact.
• Also another factor to consider is that of emissions that originate from computer manufacture and use. When computer chips are manufactured, sulfur hexafluoride and other fluorinated gases are released into the atmosphere. Computer manufacture and use are also obviously contributing to carbon dioxide production, thereby increasing the carbon footprint of each one of us.
• There is also the issue of radiation being emitted from the monitor though it is settled that when used in accordance with usual guidelines, this radiation is insignificant and is not reason enough to worry about any resulting health or other hazard.

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