GREEN IT: Why does IT pollute?

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The machines (smartphones📱, tablets, computers🖥️, laptops💻, smartwatches⌚) making pollutes a lot.

Their making requires precious metals 💎 (cobalt, nickel, lithium, coltan...), water 💧, chemicals 🧪, and fuel ⛽.

In developed countries, the average number of devices/machines a person owns is 11 (watch, laptop, screen, box...)

And to link all these devices, you need a network 🌐 which implies more middle devices/machines:

• 1,1 billion internet boxes 🔌
• 10 million of antennas 📡
• 200 million other devices 🖥️

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The website 🛒 nowadays are heavier generating a lot of requests sending/receiving,

Those websites also contain a lot of videos 📹 and HD pictures 📸 requiring high energy consumption to cope with performances.

Everything has become big: databases, requests exchanges, webpage DOM size, high-quality photos/videos/audios.

And the worst is that some of those content would not even be used (CMS with useless features).

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The other big problem in IT is data centers pollution:

These data centers require devices/machines.

Their energy consumption is monstrous 😱(whom half is dedicated to server cooling 🥶 system)

The environmental cost of the fabrication of the whole data center is impactful.

Besides, there are some innovations to counter that issue:

• -free cooling 💨 (external air rather than climatization)
• -data centers submerged in water 💦 (pool)
• -data in ADN 🧬 (extremely high gain of memory footprint)
• -use of the heat of data centers to warm urban infrastructures 🔥