Sustainability, E-Waste, and Other Complicated Things in the IoT Business

While the entire world is splitting its attention between COVID-19, the U.S. election, and re:Invent 2020, climate change did not disappear. Innovation and technology are always about bringing efficiencies and tend to be the key for solving various environmental issues. Among sustainable industries, IoT and AI are at the core of the roadmap, with gateway, sensor 5G, and AI deployment paving the way for environmental monitoring and increasing the possibility and convenience of tracking and reducing waste.

The benefits of AI and IoT are clear; however, one of the most overlooked territories of the IoT business is devices and chipsets and their role in environmental pollution, depletion of the Earth’s resources, and perhaps violation of human rights. Up to US$10 billion of precious metals is dumped each year in electronic waste. Some 54 million tons of e-waste was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21% in 5 years, the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor report found. So, what else has potential implications for the sustainability of the IoT business?

E-waste is not just the metal and silicon from a device or a gateway—a large number of various materials are involved in constructing a computing device. Many of these materials are precious or scarce, and their use has sparked political controversy and contributed to the outbreak of armed conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa, and other regions.

According to the Telecommunications Journal of Australia in 2020, up to 3.5% of carbon dioxide emissions will come from information processing and transmission. Data centers have a large impact on that number, predominantly due to the use of electricity. This is why companies like Microsoft have begun moving to the underwater data center (see the ABI Insight “Microsoft’s Underwater Data Center Pivots to the Future of the Internet of Underwater Things”)—companies with greater control of their CO2 footprint have a competitive advantage in processing data, and also present a sustainable outlook for their shareholders.

While the IoT is yet to become completely sustainable and change its relationship with waste, efforts are being made. The Songdo International Business District in Incheon, South Korea, is making a difference on a small scale by building a solution that enables the smart city to use a combination of IoT and sensors to operate its waste management system. Songdo aims to recycle 76% of its waste by 2020, through its highly efficient and convenient waste management system. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the IoT in the environmental domain opens up a lot of opportunities and monetization strategies beyond merely understanding and analyzing the environmental impact of technologies.