I wrote this review in June 2010 as request from the Journal of Industrial Ecology. In the end it wasn’t published, so I thought it will be relevant to publish it as an online review:

Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability. Bill Tomlinson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010, 210 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-01393-2

The use of information technologies as tools for solving environmental issues is a growing area. Bill Tomlinson’s book can be seen as the first comprehensive effort in this area being published for the broader audience. This is a welcome publication and it will help in consolidating this growing interdisciplinary research.

The book starts with an overview describing the research area. The author chose to use the term Green IT as an umbrella term for all the interactions between IT and environmental issues, and with focus on the proactive use of IT for helping in environmental issues. This choice of terminology is not an obvious one as Green IT usually refers just to the greening of IT itself. The subtitle “information technology for environmental sustainability” is less catchy than Green IT and it is not used throughout the text, but in my opinion it describes better the research area.

The book’s central discourse is introduced in this first chapter. The author argues that environmental problems are caused because there is a gap in the time, space and complexity scales. Environmental problems are broad, big and slow while we humans have a narrow, fast and small scale for them. IT is presented as the opportunity of bridging this gap, as it compresses time space and complexity. This argument will be used as a core idea trough the whole text.

The next three chapters are an introduction to the problem area from three different perspectives: Environmental, Human and Technological. Starting from a standard but necessary introduction to today’s most important environmental themes, Tomlinson discusses the role of humans and technology in these problems. The author takes a social constructivist position, arguing the position that technology is value free and it is just a multiplier of human intent, while  it is also pointed  out that technologies are designed, providing affordances to the users.

Next, the author proceeds to analyze the impact of IT on the environment. The first order negative effects are presented: GHG emissions, e-waste, resource depletion, toxic substances, and the multiplier effects in other emissions. This analysis lacks a bit of depth and it’s weak in references. The positive effects are then argued, followed by a comprehensive survey on existing examples, going through most of the existing discussion and projects on the use of IT in agriculture food, energy, manufacturing, transportation, buildings and IT itself.

The next three chapters deal with specific areas and are developed around the author’s own projects. The first explored opportunity is education, and focus on the informal acquiring of environmental skills. The example presented is Ecoraff, a simulation tool for learning about restoration ecology in a rainforest environment. The author presents the point that simulation broadens the horizons of the users in time and space, letting the users experiment without consequences. The second area is personal change, where the possibilities for changing behavior are explored. The author presents the project Trackulous, a tool for tracking personal behavior. Having accountability is argued as the first step for behavioral change. It encourages the users to live a “well informed life” basing their decisions on quantitative information. The third area is collective action. It develops the idea of using IT for helping people to get together to reduce their impact. The project presented is GreenScanner, a community driven database of sustainability ratings accessible through the mobile phone. The book is then wrapped up by bringing together all the presented ideas using the concept of horizons and expanding the ideas from the first chapter.

In conclusion this book provides a good introduction to the emerging field of IT for environmental sustainability. The main criticism is its lack of a broader selection of references. Most cited projects and texts are coming from computer science, human computer interaction and other technical fields, and the text misses references to much of the interesting work coming from fields such as sustainability studies, environmental analysis or ecological economics. In any case the text that Tomlinson have put together is comprehensive, and it has the potential of becoming a reference book for this research area. I would say is a recommended reading for everyone interested on the possibilities of IT in sustainability.

An interesting white paper from Ericsson, about how to achieve energy-efficient, sustainable mobile communications through network optimization, site optimization and alternative energy sources.

Ericsson projects regarding sustainability includes the use of renewable energy for both network equipment and also some other small projects as solar power mobile chargers.

One example is with China Mobile, running 252 wind and solar sites in Inner Mongolia. Photo from Ericsson.

Solar powered mobile charger. Photo from Ericsson.

In my opinion, this type of work is a good example of the relation between ICT and Sustainable Development, both by:

+ ICTD: Providing connectivity in developing rural areas, closing the digital divide.

+ Green IT: Reducing the environmental impact of  ICT infrastructure.

Photo from Sony Ericsson

Via Mobilkoll (mobile side) and Treehugger (green life side) I have seen that Sony Ericsson has released a new concept phone with environmental goodies:

• bio-plastic housings
• recycled plastic keypads
• zero charger with 3.5mW standby power
• HTML based e-manuals
• game style educational application ‘Ecomate’
• environmentally conscious packaging.

Not bad, not bad. I like the packaging and the owl thing ^_^

But most important is the environmental warranty, that states: “when any Sony Ericsson product is taken to a designated collection point, Sony Ericsson will recycle this product in an environmentally sound way. This warranty is valid globally, regardless of where the product was originally purchased”.They have already 500 collection points.

Awesome, that is some fact and more than just words or concepts.

More info at Sony Ericsson press release.

Photo from Nokia

This reminds me of the Nokia 3110 Evolve. that it was announced December last year, that is quite a big time advantage. It is supposed to be for sell already, but I haven’t find it yet. The environmental carachteristics are a bit similar:

• 50 percent of it’s bio-covers come from renewable sources.
• It’s presented in small packaging made of 60 percent recycled content.
• And it comes with Nokia’s most energy efficient charger yet, the AC-8.

Nokia has also its recycling plan.

I remember also that NEC had a bioplastic based phone back in 2005.

Interesting to see how this will keep developing, let’s hope this kind of innovations reach mainstream and are a natural part of the products and not just a marketing thing. Make the green look normal, not the normal look green (From the green marketing manifesto book).

Photo from Ericsson.

I found an interesting programme called The Green Power for Mobile that wants to promote the use of renewable energy for mobile networks. The plan is both to increase connectivity to people lacking access to regular electricity and to substitute diesel in those places where there is off-grid infrastructure based on fossil fuels.

That is such a great project! I will keep a look about how it is developing.

Photo from Ericsson.

From the time in Ericsson I remember their projects about using renewable energy powered mobile systems. From the base stations, to mobile solar chargers as shown in the picture. Now they have a nice specific site presenting their projects with videos and links to several white papers.

One thought. Shouldn’t this idea be extended to normal base stations? For instances retroffiting network equipment in sunny south spain with solar panels. Even if you keep it on the grid without batteries, it would reduce the total energy consumption of the site and probably resell energy on the grid in the sunniest times.

I would keep an eye about this. A sustainable pervasive information cloud.