Technology, industry and sustainable development
In a phone, almost all of the environmental footprint has already happened before it is switched on. Knowing where the impact really lies is what makes it possible to decide well at the drawing board.
01What “sustainable development” was meant to say
The definition that became standard dates from 1987, from the report Our Common Future of the World Commission on Environment and Development, known as the Brundtland Report:
Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
It has three dimensions that must be sustained at the same time, and that is where the difficulty lies: the environmental (do not deplete or degrade), the social (development must reach people) and the economic (it must be viable over time). A solution that wins on one and wrecks another is not sustainable: a plant that pollutes, an ecological product that nobody can afford, or an industry that closes when the subsidy is withdrawn.
Since 2015, that framework has been expressed in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Three bear directly on electronics: affordable and clean energy (7), industry, innovation and infrastructure (9), and responsible consumption and production (12).
02The life cycle of an electronic device
To assess a product’s impact it is not enough to look at how much power it uses. You have to follow it from the mine to the landfill, which is what a life cycle assessment does:
| Stage | What happens | Where the problem lies |
|---|---|---|
| Extraction | Copper, aluminum, tin, lithium, cobalt, tantalum and rare earths | Mining that is intensive in water and energy, concentrated in a few countries, with severe social and labor conflicts in some supply chains |
| Manufacturing | Wafers, packaging, circuit boards, assembly | The stage with the highest embodied energy: making an integrated circuit takes far more energy than that chip will consume in its entire life |
| Distribution | Transport and packaging | Smaller than the other stages, but not zero |
| Use | Electricity consumption over the years | Dominates in power-hungry equipment —refrigerators, motors, lighting— and weighs little in a phone |
| End of life | Repair, reuse, recycling or disposal | Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contains lead, mercury, cadmium and brominated compounds, and also valuable metals |
In a phone or a computer, most of the footprint has already been produced before you turn it on. That is why, for such devices, extending the useful life reduces the impact far more than any saving in power consumption. By contrast, in an industrial motor that runs 6000 hours a year, the use stage dominates and it makes sense to replace it with a more efficient one.
According to the 2024 Global E-waste Monitor, about 62 million metric tons of WEEE were generated worldwide in 2022, and only about 22% was formally collected and recycled. The rest is lost, and with it the copper, gold and rare earths it contains.
03How much what we design consumes
Electronics is both part of the problem and part of the solution. On the one hand, everything that is plugged in consumes power; on the other, electronic control is what lets a motor use 30% less or a house manage its energy. Two figures to give a sense of scale:
- The International Energy Agency estimated the consumption of data centers at about 460 TWh in 2022, around 2% of the world’s electricity, with a clearly rising trend driven by artificial intelligence.
- Standby consumption of household appliances —the famous “vampire” load— has historically accounted for between 5% and 10% of residential electricity use. It is energy you pay for without using anything.
Change the values and see what weighs most. The emission factor depends on how electricity is generated in each country: Argentina’s is around 0.35 kg of CO₂ per kWh, much lower than that of a coal-based country and higher than that of a hydroelectric one.
04From the linear to the circular economy
The linear model —extract, make, use, throw away— assumes infinite materials and an infinite place to dispose of them. The circular model aims to bring materials back into the cycle, and ranks the strategies from best to worst:
- Design for repair. Screws instead of glue, replaceable batteries, schematics and spare parts available, firmware that does not lock out third-party parts. These are engineering decisions, not marketing ones, and they determine whether a device lives three years or ten.
- Planned obsolescence. Deliberately shortening the useful life is, besides an environmental problem, a matter of professional ethics: the engineer who implements it is part of the decision.
- Restriction of substances. The European RoHS directive limits lead, mercury, cadmium and others; that is why lead-free solder became the standard and changed working temperatures.
- WEEE management. In Argentina regulation is uneven across provinces and municipalities, and there are national bills that have been under discussion for years: it is advisable to check the regulations in force before a project that will generate electronic waste.
05Where the engineer decides
A product’s sustainability is defined, to a large extent, at the drawing board:
| Design decision | Effect |
|---|---|
| Linear or switching power supply | 40% efficiency versus 85-95%: for every useful watt, how much is thrown away as heat |
| Low-power mode in the firmware | Can bring standby from 2 W down to 50 mW, and multiply the life of a battery by ten |
| Oversizing the electrolytic capacitors | Service life doubles for every 10 °C lower operating temperature: it is the number one cause of equipment dying young |
| Choosing components with long availability | Whether a spare part exists in five years decides if the device is repaired or thrown away |
| Publishing the schematic and the service manual | Enables third-party repair and extends the life of the product |
Many of those decisions are studied in detail in switching power supplies and in maintenance.
06Activities
With a plug-in power meter, record the standby power of five devices at home or in the laboratory. Calculate how much they add up to per year in kWh and in pesos, and what percentage of total consumption they represent.
Take apart a device that is no longer in use and inventory its materials: board, housing, power supply, cables, battery. Classify what can be repaired, reused and recycled, and find out where WEEE is taken in your town.
Take a simple product —a charger, an LED lamp, a speaker— and propose three specific design changes that extend its useful life or make it easier to repair, estimating the additional cost of each one.
07Ideas worth revisiting
- “Digital doesn’t pollute.” Every cloud service is a data center with real power consumption and cooling.
- “Recycling solves the problem.” Recycling comes last on the list for a reason: it recovers material with losses and consumes energy. Repairing and reusing pay off much more.
- Comparing only the use-stage consumption and ignoring the energy embodied in manufacturing.
- “Switch everything to LED” without looking at the rest. Lighting weighs little compared with air conditioning or motors in most installations.
- Assuming that what is sustainable is always more expensive: in many cases the total cost of ownership, over five or ten years, is lower.
08Self-assessment
State the Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainable development.
Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.
Why does extending the life of a phone reduce its footprint more than switching it off more often?
Because in that kind of device most of the energy and materials were consumed in manufacturing. The use-stage consumption is comparatively small.
A device sits on standby drawing 2 W all year. How much energy is that?
2 W · 8760 h = 17,520 Wh ≈ 17.5 kWh per year, without ever having used it.
Rank from best to worst: recycle, repair, reduce.
Reduce, repair, recycle.
What does the RoHS directive restrict, and what effect did it have in the workshop?
It restricts hazardous substances such as lead, mercury and cadmium. In practice it imposed lead-free solder, with a higher working temperature and other precautions.
Two design decisions that extend the life of a device.
For example: oversizing and ventilating the electrolytic capacitors so they run cooler, and using screws with replaceable batteries instead of glued assembly.
09Further reading
- World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future (Brundtland Report). United Nations, 1987 (Spanish edition: “Nuestro futuro común”). The document that fixed the definition and put the subject on the world agenda.
- Michael Braungart and William McDonough. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press, 2002 (Spanish edition: “Cradle to Cradle. De la cuna a la cuna,” McGraw-Hill, 2005). The proposal to design products from the start with their next life in mind.
- E. F. Schumacher. Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Blond & Briggs, 1973 (Spanish edition: “Lo pequeño es hermoso,” Hermann Blume). A classic on appropriate technology at a human scale, which has aged better than expected.
- UNITAR and ITU. Global E-waste Monitor 2024. Report, available online. Up-to-date data on the generation, collection and recycling of electronic waste by region.