E-Waste not, Want not.

In light of YouTube surpassing 2 billion daily viewers, here are some interesting facts about e-waste, shared with me from a coworker @millerbrooks…. How green is web and e-communications?  Here’s a few enlightening stats for you to ponder today…

• Electronic devices are much more complex and expensive to recycle then print, recover and reuse due to the toxic nature of many of their components, and current systems are still in the early stages.

• The average data center serving our electronic devices consumes the same amount of energy as 25,000 households

• Server farms that power the web have become the fastest growing users of fossil fuel in the world, and the amount of energy they use is doubling every year.

• 70 percent of toxic waste in U.S. landfills comes from e-waste.

• Spam emails sent annually, have the footprint of driving a car around the globe 1.6 million times. (Can you believe that??)

• Swedish researchers found recently that in Europe, reading the news for 30 minutes online produces more CO 2 per year, per reader, than reading a printed newspaper.

So I guess putting that little “please don’t print unless absolutely necessary!” at the bottom of our e-mail signatures isn’t really that noble of us is it?