Obringer, Renee, Rachunok, Benjamin, Maia-Silva, Debora, Arbabzadeh, Maryam, Nateghi, Roshanak and Madani, Kaveh (2021) The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 167 . Art.Nr. 105389. DOI 10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105389.

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Abstract

often recognized too late, typically when changing the adopted technologies and behavioral norms is difficult. A similar story may unfold if society continues to blindly transition to an unregulated and environmentally unaudited digital world, a transition path that has been facilitated by the fourth industrial revolution and is now accelerated by the global COVID-19 crisis. The newly developed digital lifestyle has major environmental benefits, including the reduction of travel-related CO2 emissions. Yet, increased Internet use has some hidden environmental impacts that must be uncovered (Fig. 1a) to make the transition to a lowcarbon and green economy successful.
The data centers’ electricity consumption accounts for 1% of the global energy demand (Masanet et al., 2020), more than the national energy consumption of many countries. Depending on the energy supply mix and use efficiency, Internet traffic contributes differently to negative environmental impacts and climate change. As the number of Internet users increases, the number of online services and applications they use grow. This trend exacerbates the environmental footprint of the Internet, despite the many successful and significant efforts to improve the efficiency of data centers (Masanet et al., 2020) and reduce their reliance on fossil energy. In order to build a sustainable digital world, it is imperative to carefully assess the environmental footprints of the Internet and identify the individual and collective actions that most affect its growth.

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