The Growing Need for Ethical Technology: Promoting Changes to the Environmentally Unfriendly ICT Market

The climate change discourse lacks dialogue about the negative impact that everyday technology like smartphones and computers play in the world. While certain technologies are considered harbingers of climate change, such as motor vehicles that run on petroleum, information and communications technology (ICT) plays a significant role in the ever-increasing global climate change problem. Total global emissions from ICT are expected to increase from 1% measured back in 2007 to an overwhelming 14% by 2040. This can be attributed to three main causes: the high energy manufacturing process, data center emissions, and predatory business practices such as planned obsolescence (i.e. building devices specifically to last for short time periods to promote regular purchases). 

Despite these issues, the climate change community often fails to attend to the various quandaries that arise with ICT. While there are options to practice ethical consumerism for other technologies such as purchasing a hybrid vehicle or a solar-based water heating system, there are virtually zero products in the market that can serve as an alternative to harmful ICT products. Furthermore, the current environmental standards worldwide for electronics seemingly promote environmentally unfriendly behavior on various levels. This limits the ability for meaningful change to be made and requires arduous work from both the bottom-up and the top-down. As such, consumer activism and strengthening government regulations stand as the two primary solutions to attend to this issue. 

Bottom-Up: Consumer Activism

Consumer activism has historically led to significant changes in the market. For example, the Prius effect is perhaps the most prominent example that showcases the effectiveness of environmental activism. Through a process of “conspicuous conservation” which signals the conscious environmental efforts of individuals in the marketplace and subsequently persuades many other consumers to follow their lead, the number of electric vehicles purchased increased significantly in the last twenty years. Electric and hybrid vehicles went from fringe goods to mainstream sensations with other automotive brands following suit by introducing their own electric vehicles such as the Honda Civic hybrid vehicle. When consumers show their enthusiasm towards certain product types, it encourages the market to listen and to adapt.

This type of consumer activism can be applied into the ICT category as well. The introduction of the Fairphone, a European brand which aims to minimize environmental impact and promote fair labor conditions, has demonstrated this desire by consumers for environmentally conscious products of all sorts. Although the company has only existed for seven years, it has recently garnered so much attention that it sold out of its second model. Further interest in technology such as that created by Fairphone is destined to sway other companies into developing similarly ethical options for home technology in the near future. The Prius’ relatively instant success, for example, was succeeded by the eventual creation of competing hybrid and electric vehicle models (e.g. the Nissan Leaf) within a period of a decade. As such, it appears that if consumers continue this trend towards technology such as Fairphone smartphones, the market will soon follow.

Top-Down: Stronger Government Regulations

Quite evidently, various companies in the tech industry including Apple and HP are openly combative of green standards that would require them to assume more environmentally friendly practices. The Digital Right to Repair Coalition, a prominent American trade association, has written extensively about the ineffectiveness of U.S. electronic standards due to missing or poor criteria in standards regarding durability (i.e. the ability to reuse/repair electronics), hazardous materials, supply chain transparency, and recycling, among many others. The European Environmental Bureau further estimates that if the durability problem alone was addressed and the lifetime of everyday tech was expanded by a single year, the reduction in GHG emissions would be equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road for one year. Given this, The European Union has recently introduced the Circular Economy Action Plan as part of the European Green Deal to move closer towards climate neutrality. This plan is expected to serve as a model for other nations interested in diverting away from environmentally unfriendly practices in tech and other industries while also creating new jobs and spurring economic growth. Research has proven that this type of plan to introduce greater environmental standards is actually linked to increases in economic growth and could be successfully realized in various country-wide scenarios. 

The main caveat of focusing on government regulations is that the regulations should be stringent and that proper checks must be in place in order for progress to be made. Various instances abound in which such regulations exist merely as a symbolic victory without suitable enforcement measures. To demonstrate this point, the lesser known Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act provides a unique example of how tech companies require greater scrutiny. Section 1502 discusses conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo prominently used in everyday technology. This includes how companies should proceed in publicly disclosing usage of these conflict minerals and conducting “due diligence” searches to ensure their supply chains are not linked to armed conflict. However, international watchdog organizations such as Amnesty International and Global Witness have found that the effectiveness of Section 1502 is greatly limited. They have investigated various companies’ supply chains and discovered that only 1 in 5 technology companies adequately check and disclose whether conflict minerals exist in their products. This proves that current regulations cannot effectively curb harmful practices employed in technology companies’ everyday operations and more stringent ones must take their place.

Conclusion

The importance of this matter is clear as the significant environmental consequences of ICT are not being mitigated by appropriate measures. To address this issue, the two different bottom-up and top-down approaches are meant to introduce plausible means for progress. First, the bottom-up method of promoting consumer activism presents a market-based solution to overcoming this issue as tech companies are likely to contend with the interests of individuals who buy their products as shown with the Prius and Fairphone examples. Consumers can become more mindful of which tech products are greener through looking at monitoring reports produced by such non-profits as Green Electronic Council’s extensive EPEAT registry and Ethical Consumer’s technology scorecards. Then, by committing to buying green products and sharing one’s journey towards purchasing greener tech with friends and family, market demand will shift accordingly. Second, the top-down method of more stringent government regulations is a more hard-handed approach that is able to effectuate change if presented as strongly as the Circular Economy Action Plan and not as weakly as Section 1502. Legislators in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom should introduce more detailed plans to manage tech companies’ supply chains, maintain a functional independent review board, and develop strong enforcement mechanisms. For example, American Congressional legislators can pass a bill that extends the scope and functionality of provisions set forth in the Dodd-Frank Act that mirror the more stringent regulations featured in the European Green Deal. Both of these proposed solutions are just two of many that exist to foster a more conscious awareness of the need to combat this underreported issue of environmentally unfriendly technology.