[pp.int.general] Towards a Pirate Policy on Environmental Issues

[Philip Hunt]

On 30 July 2012 23:12, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
>
> 1. Energy consumption of electronic devices. The Internet alone consumes
> about 2% of global energy, add to that a plethora of end user devices. In
> corporations electricity bills typically can be 30% for data centres and 50%
> for desktops etc. There are answers to all of this in terms of relocating
> data centres to be near renewable energy sources etc.

Another idea would be to make use of the waste heat that data centers
produce, to heat homes and offices. This is a similar idea to combined
heat and power, where the waste heat from a power station is used to
heat buildings.

> 2. Global waste from discarded preliminarily obsolescent computers, phones,
> associated batteries etc. This is a huge problem, many of you will have seen
> pictures of the computer graveyards where people pick through to recycle
> elements, But at all local tips in all countries there is a growing toxicity
> problem because of the throwaway culture with electronic devices. Sensible
> recycling and disposal, as well as production with longer lifecycles in
> mind, are important basic policy element here.

Encouraging the use of free software, which often has lower resource
demands than proprietary softwarre, and therefore runs on
lower-specified machines, would also help to prevent obsolescence.

-- 
Phil Hunt, <cabalamat at gmail.com>