There is simply too much going on. There have been several days of back to back meetings, some exciting software development and some minor crisis management and course corrections to a major project – the usual stuff that a CIO has to deal with. Talking about course correction, we had installed a SMART board in one of our classrooms (we planned four this semester) which was interfering with the use of the chalk board. This was not caught earlier because of some minor communications issues. We needed to do something quick, so we scrambled to move it to a mobile stand. One of our staff found a stand available in eBay, bid and won the bid. Of course, not many all over the world are waiting in line for a Mobile stand for a SMART Board, but still, it was fun. As a backup we also ordered the “real thing”, which apparently is manufactured or assembled only on demand. In the end, the eBay version had some missing parts and could not be used and the “real thing” came, but scheduling human resources to put it together took time, but finally it is done. The board itself weighs about 500 pounds and the stand another 200. I am being told that it was manageable to move short distances. The board’s movement up and down is done with a switch. Though this has been delayed, the faculty who were planning on using it have been very understanding, so all is well.

Professor Jay Turner from Environmental Studies asked if I would like to join a reading group of students and faculty (Jay, Kristina Jones and Alden Griffith) discussing Technology and Environmental Sustainability this semester. This week’s topic of life-cycle of digital electronics and solar panels was interesting, so I decided to go. I took some time to read through the assigned readings – Paper vs Digital, Solar Panels, and Chapter 2 from the book “High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health” by Elizabeth Grossman. They are all excellent reads and I especially recommend the last one. I think many of us who are technologists have no clue about what is the real environmental cost of making digital devices. We all know that it is pretty high, but I doubt very much that anyone knows that mining for 1 ton of copper results in 310 tons of waste in terms of rocks and ore. This is huge. But like everything else, there is a lot more to it. For example, base metals like copper are also easily recyclable – whether they get recycled at a rate that is high and desirable is a whole another question. What follows is a short collection of a wide ranging set of topics discussed  during the class without particular attribution to who said what.

Disclaimer: It is highly possible that my interpretations of a few things discussed may not be accurate, so feel free to comment on them or send me the corrections!

As you know, I take pride in having gone paperless for various reasons, but primarily as a good sustainability practice. However, I am realistic about the fact this may not work for everyone and that I also realize that using digital devices results in an environmental cost. Attempts to find academic research that compares these two in a way that makes sense has been elusive because it is hard. The Paper vs Digital discussion brings to light a major issue – that we are ignorant to a large extent what the real environmental, health and cultural costs are of producing digital devices. At the same time, there are similar costs associated with the production of paper. One student mentioned how the environmental cost of producing paper bags that can carry the weight of groceries may be comparable to or even more than that of recyclable plastic bags. I have a friend who has worked for ages at a paper company and thanks to him I have seen first hand how much effort goes into producing paper grocery bags. Sticking with cloth bags may be a better practice.

As one of the comments for the opinion by Don Carli points out, today, most content creation is “born digital”. So, the environmental cost is implicit, or sunken cost. Why would I then print it and add to the cost? As someone pointed out during the discussion, the digital devices are here to stay and many of us are most likely to carry multiple devices. Given that, I believe reducing the use of paper results in net reduction of environmental cost, in my opinion. Electronic content is made available in a way that literally hundreds if not thousands or millions can access that single copy from wherever and whenever. This is not true with paper, amongst other things. I don’t have to remember to carry that paper with me to a meeting, for eg.. Most of the time, if one forgets, they end up printing that material again. On the other hand, digitally one can access that single copy from multiple places. The ability to search, lookup the words in the dictionary, annotate and have the annotation stay with the digital copy are added conveniences that does not come with paper. So, on balance, we need to assess the value of incremental cost of these conveniences in comparison to our own collective commitments to saving the environment. Unless compelling arguments that appeals to large groups of the population can be made, this debate, like the global warming debate, will simply be a debate with each group trying to advance their beliefs and help their respective causes.

I loved the example of one of the students in this regard. She mentioned how the research showing the adverse health effects of DDT hit close to home to many, thereby resulting in a ban and made the point that unless such a revealing research points to a digital device being a culprit to human health, it is unlikely that things will change. Absolutely! The only difference is that DDT’s lifespan allowed one to correlate the human health issues with the spraying of DDT and inhalation etc. The rate at which the digital devices die, such correlations may be much harder to make. A common discussion is the health effect of radiation from digital devices, especially WiFi devices and cell phones and their proximity to the brain. The frequencies at which wireless networks operate have changed dramatically in the past 5 years, so, by the time research regarding 2.4 GHz is complete, it may have become obsolete. I always refer people to the World Health Organization (WHO) position statement on this in 2006 and ask them to derive their own conclusions regarding this subject. More to my point, they revised it in 2011 which now implies that cell phones can potentially be carcinogenic. Based on what I have seen, cell phone use has only increased!

We also discussed the merits of labeling devices (with some metric that represents the environmental cost) vs what value it will bring to the table. More importantly, who and how it will be done is a question. I am sure that politicians will be involved and decisions will be slow. The so-called non-partisan composition (which, as a statistical average, may be non-partisan, but with a huge standard deviation between clusters on the left and right) will make it impossible to reach labeling standards because in the end everything is about the economy and bottom lines. Labeling something adversely will affect the bottom line, will result in law suits etc. etc. And by the time we figure all of this out, the technology would have moved forward at lightening speed.

I can go on and on with this, but I need to wrap up.

Thanks to Kristina Jones‘s question about solar powered devices, I will be placing an order to get something to charge my iPad and phone through solar energy. These devices are not cheap. But I will be happy to share them with my colleagues here after I check ’em out. I might even consider getting a few for circulation in the library (I know, I know, I have not checked with my colleagues about it!)

The environmental impact on producing digital devices is real. We need to accept that as much as we are willing to accept that it will be impossible for us to go back from using them. Trying to strike a good balance is something we all owe it to ourselves and generations to come. How best to accomplish is something where we can get stuck. But, we should use our best judgements to Just Do It! I am proud of all that we have been doing in LTS towards this – outsourcing where appropriate, looking for more efficient data centers, virtualizing the server, virtual desktop devices instead of PCs (see in Clapp), ebooks for those who are comfortable using them etc. And we will continue to move along.

Unless we produce the engineers, computer scientists, environmental scientists, and policy wonks who are taught to think of all these problems as a whole and understand the impact of the interconnectedness of a whole slew of things and the global nature of these issues, these problems will persist. Unless right at the beginning of the design of a future chip, an engineer is aware of the environmental impact, he/she will design it to be the fastest chip in the world that makes the most money for the company regardless of the humanitarian costs.

On that note, I want to thank Jay again for inviting me and I look forward to going to as many of the remaining the classes as I can and learn.

Here is a list of useful links:

• discussions on the ebooks vs paper books topic – http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp
• Energy Intensity of Computer Manufacturing:  Hybrid Assessment Combining Process and Economic Input−Output Methods – Eric Williams, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2004, 38 (22), pp 6166–6174
• How Companies Line up? from Greenpeace
• EPEAT ratings