Dirty Greek - PCs and The Damage They Cause

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Dirty Greek - PCs and The Damage They Cause

Environment : PCs and The Damage They Cause

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Do you really NEED that new PC? Can you update it first instead, rather than buying a new one? It seems as though a personal computer is a small device - something that shouldn't in itself have much environmental impact. However, that's not true at all. According to this BBC article, PCs take up to 10 times their own weight in materials to be produced, according to a study done by a UN research group.

^"As computers become smaller and more energy-efficient, their environmental burden might be expected to decrease - but the study suggests that the opposite is happening.

It found that manufacturing a 24kg PC with monitor needs at least 240kg of fossil fuels to provide the energy, and 22kg of chemicals. Add to that, 1.5 tonnes of water, and your desktop system has used up the weight of a sports utility vehicle in materials before it even leaves the factory.

Compare this with cars or refrigerators, which use only between one and two times their weight in fossil fuels, and it is clear that making more than 130 million computers worldwide has a significant impact.

So, basically, what it looks like is that every single thing we do sucks. We can't do anything right, every piece of technology we create is extremely harmful, and our society is doomed to collapse. Maybe. What we need to do is just keep a watchful eye on this stuff and be more conscious of what we buy and what goes into the processes that happen every day to keep our civilization running.