Back Thru The Futures is proud to be a company filled with tech savvy, environmentally conscious people. When one of our technicians showed me this video about the future of cities, I knew I wanted to share it. Reducing our carbon footprint should be a goal of every business and the impact that we have on the environment can be reduced in many ways. While we know it ends with recycling, we also know it starts with developing sustainability into the manufacturing process.
According to https://www.advancedsciencenews.com, “Data centers contribute to carbon emissions through electricity consumption, both in terms of powering computers for computing and for long-term data storage, resulting in an estimated 100 megatonnes of CO2 emissions produced per year.”
While we focus on the environmental impact of computing, building materials have a huge impact as well. According to https://architecture2030.org/, “Just three materials – concrete, steel, and aluminum – are responsible for 23% of total global emissions (most of this used in the built environment). There is incredible opportunity for embodied carbon reduction in these high-impact materials through policy, design, material selection, and specification.”
Every aspect of manufacturing, from from computer chips to building materials comes with a carbon price tag. Technology has focused on building smaller, faster, more powerful devices — but few have considered their overall environmental impact. Researchers are trying to change that by challenging the field to add carbon footprint to the list of metrics when designing new processes, new computing systems, new hardware, and new ways to use devices.
The Future of Cities