Sustainability – Green Social Thought

Digital enlightenment: an invitation

Tue, 02 May 2023 16:26:08 +0000

by Katie Singer

A few years ago, an engineer told me that calculating my carbon footprint by my monthly utility bill is like weighing an elephant by putting only the tip of its tail on the scale. Because, he said, buying any mass-produced item, including an “energy-efficient” tablet, an “energy-saving” appliance or even a solar PV system means engaging the global super-factory.

Mass production of anything, he explained, depends on worker-hazardous and ecologically-ravaging mining, fossil-fuel-powered smelters, water-polluting chemicals, assembly plants, energy-guzzling and radiation-emitting telecom access networks, and an intercontinental network of bunker-fuel-polluting ships, planes and airports, trains and rails, and trucks and roads.

This man left me speechless.

Then, I read about a laptop’s cradle-to-grave energy use. A laptop will consume 81% of its lifetime energy before its end-user turns it on for the first time.¹ The remaining 19% goes to operating and discarding or recycling the computer. This calculation does not include the energy used by access networks or data centers.

Call me digitally enlightened.

Would other people study electronics’ ecological costs—and move toward living within our ecological means?

Consider this an invitation to trace the supply chain of one substance in your smartphone (or another kind of computer).

STEP 1: Pick one substance used in manufacturing a smartphone.

The Screen: Aluminosilicate glass, aluminum, aluminum oxide, cerium, fluorinated greenhouse gas (F-GHG), gorilla glass, indium tin oxide, lead, lithium, nitric acid, oxide of silicon, potassium nitrate, sapphire, silicon dioxide, sulfuric acid, tin oxide.

The Battery: Aluminum, cadmium, carbon graphite, coal tar, cobalt, coltan, copper, graphite, lead, lithium cobalt oxide, lithium, manganese, mercury, nickel-metal hydride, organohalogen compounds, tantalum, zinc.

The Case: Aluminum alloys, bromine, magnesium, nickel, plastic, tin.

The Electronics (the circuit board, wiring, speakers, motors): Acetone, acetylene gas, antimony, arsenic, arsenic pentafluoride, arsine gas, benzene, beryllium, beryllium oxide, boron, boron tri-chloride (BC13), boron trifluoride, cadmium, charcoal, chlorofluorocarbons, chloroform, chromium, coal, copper, diborane, dysprosium, eucalyptus trees, gallium, gadolinium, gold, glycol ethers, hafnium, hydrochloric acid (HCL), hydrogen, hydrogen chloride gas, hydrofluoric acid, indium, lanthanum, lead, methylene chloride, neodymium-iron-boron, nickel, perchloroethylene, petroleum coke, palladium, phosphine, phosphorous, platinum, polychlorinated biphenyl, potassium, praseodynmium, quartz, scandium, silicon tetrachloride, silicon wafers, silver, sulfur dioxide, tantalum, terbium, tin, titanium aluminum nitride, titanium nitride, toluene, tri-chloroethylene (TCE), tungsten, water, wood, xylene, yttrium, zinc.

STEP 2: Describe what your substance does in manufacturing or operating a smartphone.

STEP 3: Trace your substance’s supply chain—and reference your answers. Note: below the questions, I list a batch of resources to get you started.

If your substance is an ore:

In what countries is this substance mined?
Who owns the mines?
At the mine, what kind of work is needed? How much does a miner earn in a day? Do any children mine for this ore? What are common health impacts from mining this substance?
To rinse the ores, how much water is used? What is the source of water?
What impacts does mining this ore have on the region’s waterways, farming and wildlife?
How many smelters and refineries does this ore travel through to become usable in a smartphone? By what means (air, ship, truck, train) is the raw material transported?
What kind of workers does a smelter need? How much does a worker earn in a day? What are common health impacts of the work?
How much electricity does the smelter consume in one day? What kind of fuel(s) power the smelter? What kind of toxins and emissions does it generate?
How/does smelting this ore impact the region’s waterways, farming, public health and electric power grid?
Can you access images of mining or refining this substance?
What regulations protect miners and refinery workers? What regulations protect the region’s environment, wildlife and public health while the substance is mined or refined?
In what year did mining of this substance begin?
When will this ore be depleted?
In the regions where mining and refining this substance take place, how have their local governance/democratic rule, per capita income, number of children per woman, life expectancy and educational opportunities for boys and girls changed in the last 25 years?
Can this substance be recycled? What toxins are emitted by recycling it? How much water is used to recycle it? If it is recyclable, what companies in what countries recycle it?

If you substance is a chemical:

In what countries is this chemical produced?
Who owns the company that produces it?
List your chemical’s ingredients.
What kind of work does the chemical’s production require? What does a worker earn? How does the work impact workers’ health?
What kind of toxins does this factory generate? Do they go into waterways, land and/or air? How does this chemical’s production impact the region’s farming, food chain and energy consumption?
How much electricity does this factory use per day? Per month? What fuel is used to generate this electricity?
Can you access images of this chemical and/or its production?
What regulations protect the waterways, wildlife and public health around the manufacturing plant?
By what means (air, ship, truck, train) is the chemical transported from its manufacturing plant to its next station?
In what year did production of this chemical begin?
Do any supply shortages or regulations threaten its future?
How has this chemical’s production changed the region’s local governance/democratic rule, per capita income, number of children per woman, life expectancy, and educational opportunities for boys? for girls…in the last 25 years?
Are less energy-intensive and/or less toxic alternatives to this chemical currently produced? What companies in what countries are producing (or researching production of) safer alternatives?

STEP 4: Share your findings with classmates, neighbors, co-workers.

STEP 5: Reduce your Internet footprint by 3% per month. Get your school, workplace and household to join you.

Limit video use. Delete unused data. Don’t let children use electronics until they master reading, writing and math on paper. Wait at least four years to upgrade to a new device. Rather than buying new equipment, enact right-to-repair legislation, access free repair manuals at ifixit.com and establish fix-it clinics in your town. If you’ve got a website, compress your image files, disable unnecessary plug-ins, limit data-intensive flashing photos and videos. Discover and share new ways to reduce.

STEP 6: Insist that manufacturers prioritize safer chemicals, less extractions and worker protections:

Buy raw materials and parts only from sources that verify worker and environmental protections. Make modular, repairable electronics that reuse and repurpose still-functional parts like ink cartridges and batteries. Make battery replacement easy and fire-safe. At the design stage, plan for a device’s second life.

RESOURCES For RESEARCH

For more resources, check out my reports at www.ourweb.tech/letters.

Chemicals

Compound Interest, “The Chemical Elements of a Smartphone,” Feb. 19, 2014. www.compoundchem.com/2014/02/19/the-chemical-elements-of-a-smartphone/

Green Chemistry & Commerce Council https://greenchemistryandcommerce.org/about-gc3/introduction

Green Screen for Safer Chemicals: finding safer chemicals and environmentally preferable products. https://www.greenscreenchemicals.org/

Rohrig, Brian, April 2015, “Smartphones: Smart Chemistry.” https://www.acs.org/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/archive-2014-2015/smartphones.html

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition www.svtc.org

White, Heather and Lynn Zhang, “Complicit,” 2017. A documentary about computer assembly workers’ exposure to n-hexane. https://www.complicitfilm.org/

Energy Use

Andrae, Anders S. G. and Tomas Edler, “On Global Electricity Usage of Communications Technology: Trends to 2030,” Challenges, 2015, 6, 117-157; https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117.

Andrae, Anders S.G., “Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast,” a powerpoint presentation, October 5, 2017.

Climate, July 13, 2019, “Is Netflix Bad for the Environment? How Streaming Video Contributes to Climate Change.” www.ecowatch.com/young-spoken-word-poets-take-on-climate-change-2639230969.html

Coma, Miguel, on 5G’s energy use, https://www.meer.com/en/authors/943-miguel-coma

DeDecker, Kris, www.lowtechmagazine.com.

Cook, Gary, Jude Lee, et al., “Clicking Clean: Who is winning the race to build a green internet?” Technical report, Greenpeace, 2017. https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20170110_greenpeace_clicking_clean.pdf

Kato, Kzuhiko, Akinobu Murata and Koichi Sakuta, “Energy Pay-back Time and Life-cycle CO2 Emission of Residential PV Power System with Silicon PV Module,” Progress in Photovoltaics Research and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, revised 19 December 1997. Note: manufacturing silicon for solar PV panels is similar to manufacturing silicon for transistors.

Mills, Mark P., “The Cloud Begins with Coal: Big Data, Big Networks, Big Infrastructure and Big Power: An Overview of the Electricity Used by the Global Digital Ecosystem,” 2013. https://www.tech-pundit.com/articles/ See also Mills’ Digital Cathedrals from Encounter Books, 2020; and “Unobtanium,” https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=308699784174165

Smil, Vaclav, “Your Phone Costs Energy—Even Before You Turn It On, IEEE Spectrum, 26 April 2016. https://spectrum.ieee.org/your-phone-costs-energyeven-before-you-turn-it-on

Strubell, Emma, A. Ganesh and A. McCallum, “Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP,” 5 Jun 2019. https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02243

Troszak, Thomas, “Why Do We Burn Coal and Trees for Solar Panels?”

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels Manufacturing silicon for transistors and solar panels uses similar processes.

Labor

Glum, Julia, “The Median Amazon Employee’s Salary is $28,000. Jeff Bezos Makes More Than That in 10 Seconds,” https://money.com/amazon-employee-median-salary-jeffbezos/

Smith, Ted, David A. Sonnenfeld and David Naguib Pellow, Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Envornmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry, Temple University Press, 2006.

https://www.uspirg.org/feature/usp/right-repair

Mining

www.anatomyof.ai Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, 2018, an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources.

Abraham, David S., The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age, Yale University Press, 2015.

Amnesty International and African Resources Watch, “This is What We Die For: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt,” 2016. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/3183/2016/en/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apple-google-Microsoft-tesla-dell-sued-over-dobalt-mining-children-in-congo-for-batteries-2019-12-17/

Choi, Hye-Bin, et al., “The impact of anthropogenic inputs on lithium content in river and tap water,” Nature Communications, 2019.

Eichstaedt, Peter, Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place, Lawrence Hill Books, 2011.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths

Hodal, Kate, “Death metal: tin mining in Indonesia,” 23 Nov. 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/nov/23/tin-mining-indonesia-bangka

Jensen, Derrick, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert, Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, Monkfish Book Publishing, 2021. While focused on the ecological impacts of manufacturing, operating and discarding “renewable” power systems, the Internet demands similar substances. See also Julia Barnes’ documentary, “Bright Green Lies,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJFQmBW4RE

Kara, Siddharth, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, St. Martin’s, 2023.

Katwala, Amit, “The spiraling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction,” 8.5.18; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact

Klinger, Julie Michelle, Rare Earth Frontiers: from Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes, Cornell University Press, 2017.

Sovacool, Benjamin K., et al., “Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon future,” Science, Vol. 367, Issue 6473, 3 January 2020. See Sovacool’s publications at https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p373957-benjamin-sovacool/publications

Standefer, Katherine, Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, Hachette, 2020. Tracing a defibrillator’s elements.

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-materials-are-used-to-make-cell-phones

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/graphite-mining-pollution-in-china/

Shipping

Mims, Christopher, Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door—Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy, HarperCollins 2021.

Schlanger, Zoe, “If shipping were a country, it would be the world’s sixth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter,” Quartz, 18 April 2018.

Waste

www.ifixit.com

Lepawsky, Josh, Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste, MIT Press, 2018. www.worldingelectronicwaste.xyz

McGovern, Gerry, World Wide Waste: How Digital is Killing Our Planet and What to Do About It, Silver Beach, 2020. www.gerrymcgovern.com

Needhidasan, S., et al., “Electronic waste–an emerging threat to the environment of urban India,” J. Environ Health Sci. Eng., Jan. 20, 2014; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3908467.

Purdy, Kevin, “How Eric Lundgren and BigBattery are Changing How We Think About ‘Used’ Batteries,” ifixit.com, April 12, 2021. https://www.ifixit.com/News/49861/how-eric-lundgren-and-bigbattery-are-changing-how-we-think-about-used-batteries

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/11/explosive-problem-with-recycling-ipads-iphones-other-gadgets-they-literally-catch-fire/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1a455bbe165e

Water

Asianometry, “The Big Semiconductor Water Problem,” March 9, 2022. https://asianometry.substack.com/p/the-big-semiconductor-water-problem

Reference

Needhidasan, S., et al., “Electronic waste–an emerging threat to the environment of urban India,” Environ Health Sci. Eng., Jan. 20, 2014; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3908467.

Creating protective conditions for solar facilities— in the event that a developer proposes one near you

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:03:21 +0000

by Katie Singer

In the event that a developer wants to install a utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) facility near you, consider yourself blessed with opportunities. You can shake up your assumptions about “clean, green” energy. You can learn how to present the technology’s not-so-sunny sides so that neighbors and legislators who believe that solar PVs cannot possibly have problems…actually hear you.

With humility, you can insist that the developer and your county’s planning department show you a professional engineer’s report certifying that all of the project’s hazards are mitigated.

Honestly, you might rather plant turnips or watch your child’s ballgame, but you should learn where this solar facility’s generated power will go, and if the array will connect to the grid.

If health and safety matter more to you than money—and you can suspend belief that solar PVs are renewable, safe and problem-free, proceed to Step 2: Get legal advice so that your county permits the facility only if your conditions are met.

Installation

Insist that the developer use only raw materials sourced from companies that can verify worker and environmental protections.

From installation to “decommissioning,” the developer must carry liability insurance for the project—not self-insure.

How much water will the developer use during construction? Where will it come from? Where will wastewater go? To protect groundwater, will used construction water need treatment?

The developer must keep all soil on the site. Only 400 acres (say) of land can be disturbed at a time to prevent stormwater runoff. (A big rain after a clear-cut would result in disaster.) After clearing an area (i.e., of shrubs or trees) the developer must plant grass within X number of days in order to hold soil and prevent sediment run-off. The developer must set up stormwater basins.

Your county staff, planning commissioners (if so equipped) and board of supervisors will have to evaluate against their ordinance about stormwater runoff and sediment in waterways—and/or land use issues specific to your topography.

Operations

Panels hold chemicals, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs). In a hailstorm (say), panels can crack. Your county can require monthly soil testing in specified locations to ensure that no chemicals leak into the soil. If chemicals leach into soil, what will the developer do?

Solar panels are electrical equipment. All electrical equipment poses fire hazards. To reduce risk of fire, your county can specify how long grass (or other vegetation) can get before it must be cut.

If a fire does occur during the day, the solar panels will not stop collecting sunlight and converting it into electricity: you cannot de-energize solar panels. Firefighters cannot spray burning panels with water—because water conducts electricity, and water will not put out a solar panel fire. It can only cool it. At a public hearing in Spotsylvania, Virginia, the county’s fire chief said he would not try to extinguish a solar PV fire. He would just hose down everything near it. In the event that the array catches fire, what is your county fire chief’s plan?

If the project includes a battery electric storage system (BESS)

Batteries provide high energy storage. One BESS battery can be the size of a small trailer. If you get a short and a discharge, you end up with arcing and extremely dangerous, toxic fires. (At a BESS in Moss Landing, California, one battery caught fire on September 20, 2022. Nearby residents were not allowed to leave their homes, open their windows or run ventilation systems for nearly 24 hours. Roads and businesses were closed. This BESS was designed and maintained by PG&E and Tesla; the September 20 fire was the plant’s third fire since it opened in April, 2022.)

For a data base of BESS failure events, see https://storagewiki.epri.com/index.php/BESS_Failure_Event_Database

Your county can require the developer to provide a professional engineer’s “sealed” report that all fire hazards have been evaluated and mitigated; and this BESS will not catch fire like the one at Moss Landing or others listed in the database.

To keep cool, batteries require a cooling system. How much water will this cooling system use? Where will it come from? Where will this BESS’s wastewater go? To protect groundwater, will it need treatment?

End-of-Life

When the facility is no longer efficient enough to be profitable, either all panels will be replaced and all wires (and batteries, if there’s a BESS) will be upgraded—or the developer will abandon the project. Require the developer to post a bond so that the county will not be burdened with decommissioning costs if the developer walks away. Sending panels to a recycling center is very expensive. What will happen with the (toxic, flammable) batteries at their end-of-life?

To write up conditions that you aim for your county board of supervisors to approve, you will need:

a land-use lawyer to provide guidance and appropriate language.
money for the lawyer.
to learn your county’s restrictions about discuss issues with commissioners who vote. In any case, you’ll need friendly relations with your permitting commission’s staff.
an articulate, thoroughly informed, well-mannered and even-tempered person to speak with county staff.
You might also need a professional engineer (PE).
If the developer claims that the solar facility will benefit your county economically, you will need to hire an economist to evaluate these claims.
Do not expect coverage from local media. To educate the public, you’ll need well-written, well-referenced brief entries posted on social media.

Ask if the county has in-house experts to evaluate a solar facility’s chemical run-off, fire hazards and economics etc. If not, then the county can require the developer to provide funding so that the county can hire expert-consultants chosen by the county to evaluate the facility.

For resources, visit the website maintained by Citizens for Responsible Solar: https://www.citizensforresponsiblesolar.org/. See their solar toolkit at https://www.citizensforresponsiblesolar.org/solar-toolkit. See also Kansans for Responsible Solar: https://westgardnersolar.com/utility-scale-solar-health-and-safety-concerns/

For an example of final conditions approved by Spotsylvania, VA’s Planning Commission—which does not include a BESS—visit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ea0NyIBLdyPHaD__P9nBnoUbDGVwrqHV/view
For general info about rarely-discussed problems with solar PVs, visit www.OurWeb.tech/letter-43.

Katie Singer writes about the energy, extractions, toxic waste and greenhouse gases involved in manufacturing computers, telecom infrastructure, electric vehicles and other electronic technologies. She believes that if she’s not aware that she’s part of the problem, then she can’t be part of the solution. She dreams that every smartphone user learns about the supply chain of one substance (of 1000+) in a smartphone. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring. She currently writes about nature, democracy and technology for Meer.com. Visit www.OurWeb.tech and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.

We Can’t Do It Ourselves

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 17:37:47 +0000

by Kris De Decker

How effective is individual action when it is systemic social change that is needed? Individuals do make choices, but these are facilitated and constrained by the society in which they live. Therefore, it may be more useful to question the system that requires many of us to travel and consume energy as we do….

Advances in energy efficiency have not resulted in lower energy demand, because they don’t address new and more resource-intensive consumption patterns that often emerge from more energy efficient technologies. Likewise, renewable energy sources have not led to a decarbonisation of the energy infrastructure, because (total and per capita) energy demand is increasing faster than renewable energy sources are added.

Two decades of climate-change related awareness campaigns have not decreased energy demand and carbon emissions in a significant way.

If We Bring The Good Life To All, Will We Destroy The Planet?

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 22:29:11 +0000

by Nurith Aizenman/NPR

Only one country comes even close to delivering the good life in a sustainable way: Vietnam succeeds on six social indicators — including a life expectancy above 65 years and providing sufficient nutrition — while staying within its limit on every environmental threshold except carbon emissions.

Obama’s Hidden Role in Worsening Climate Change

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 14:59:39 +0000

by Stansfield Smith

It should be a scandal that leftists-liberals paint Trump as a special threat, a war mongerer – not Obama who is the first president to be at war everyday of his eight years, who is waging seven wars at present, who dropped three bombs an hour, 24 hours a day, the entire 2016. Here is some of the worst of this anti-Trump hysteria propagated by mouthpieces for liberal Democrats — calling Republicans “fascist” is a favorite left-liberal sport.