Reputed to be virtual and dematerialized, the digital world nevertheless has a very real impact on our planet, its environment and its climate. Like other daily activities – transport, food, housing – it is based on the consumption of raw materials and energy, releasing greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere, the engine of global warming. , and producing waste. This is what the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe) and theElectronic Communications Regulatory Authority (Arcep), Wednesday January 19, in a new study on digital services. Franceinfo summarizes the main lessons of this report.
The digital sector weighs 2.5% of the French carbon footprint
The study focused on the overall impact of digital, from the manufacture of devices to their end of life, including their use, but without distinguishing between the different uses (streaming, social networks, e-mails, games video, music, television, etc.). All inclusive, digital services in France emit 16.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) per year. This represents 2.5% of France’s carbon footprint.
>> Climate crisis: how to calculate and reduce your carbon footprint?
This figure is “slightly higher than the equivalent of the waste sector in France” (14 million tons of CO2-eq) but remains well below the main sources of emissions. According to data from 2016, the carbon footprint of transport in France was, for example, 189 million tonnes of CO2-eq, or 11 times more than digital.
“Like any industrial sector, digital has a carbon impact, but it is relatively low compared to transport.”
Raphaël Guastavi, one of the authors of the studyat franceinfo
Beyond greenhouse gases, digital services produce 20 million tons of waste per year, taking into account the entire life cycle of the equipment (construction, use, end of life). They are responsible for 10% of French electricity consumption, with 48.7 terrawatt-hours.
Appliance manufacturing is the main source of greenhouse gases
Most of the impact of digital on the environment is in your hands. “The first responsible for digital impacts are (…) electronic devices (between 64% and 92% of impacts), followed by data centers (between 4% and 22% of impacts) and networks (between 2 % and 14%)”, can we read in the study. And it all plays out before you even post a photo on Instagram or watch such a big sun on France 2.
It is indeed the manufacture of these objects that weighs heavily, because they “are very energy-intensive” and they are designed “in countries with a high-carbon energy mix”. In summary, your smartphone mainly pollutes during its manufacture in China, where coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, is the main source of electricity production (56% in 2020). In addition, their manufacture requires “a significant amount of rare material (gold, silver, copper, rare earths)” and their extraction produces “lots of trash”.
But how to explain this crushing weight of personal devices compared to collective equipment? “There are simply a lot more personal equipment units than data centers”, summarizes Raphaël Guastavi. Among these devices, televisions are the most polluting, “because they are bigger and bigger and bigger”, which consumes more raw material.
There are solutions to reduce this impact on the planet
At the individual level. For the consumer, the main solution is “to extend the life of equipment as much as possible and not to give in to the sirens of novelty”, believes Raphaël Guastavi, recalling that “25 million smartphones are sold each year for 60 million French people”. It is also possible to buy refurbished products, “who have already had a first life”.
Ademe also lists a series of best practices, such as “clean up your mailbox”. “It’s not going to be a game-changer., recognizes Raphaël Guastavi. But this may be a first awareness to move towards a more sober consumption. The author of the study also recommends not consuming unnecessary data, avoiding using YouTube as a music listening site or automatically uploading his photos, even the most missed ones, to a storage service.
At the enterprise level. Much of the problem is on the side of the device manufacturers. The latter encourage, with great fanfare of advertising and the design of new models, the renewal of digital equipment and make it difficult to repair them. Raphaël Guastavi invites them to favor eco-design, to improve their repairability index and to consult the responsible communication guide published by Ademe. “The idea is to get them to offer less new products and do more recycling. We’re not quite there yet.”, he euphemizes.