One Hour Of Smartphone Use A Day ‘Produces As Much Carbon Dioxide As Four Domestic Flights

An hour of smartphone use every day for a year creates 1.25 TONNES of carbon dioxide.

You might assume that smartphones are good news for the environment, reducing people’s reliance on paper and helping to cut transport emissions.

But using your smartphone for just an hour per day produces more carbon dioxide over the course of a year than two return flights from London to Glasgow, according to new research.

For example, boiling a kettle produces 70g of CO2, driving a mile in an average car produces 710g, and spending a night in a hotel with entertainment produces 25kg.

However, one of the most surprising statistics to arise from the research is that an hour of smartphone use every day for a year creates 1.25 TONNES of CO2.

That’s more that two return flights from London to Glasgow, which Viessmann calculates as producing 500kg of CO2 each.

CO2 emissions are generated by servers and data centres when a smartphone is used to access everything from apps and search engines to maps and text messages.

95% of households in the UK own a mobile phone, with the Office Of National Statistics reporting that there are 18.9 million families in the United Kingdom.

So, Viessmann claims, if every household were to use a smartphone for just one hour per day, this would create 23.6 million tonnes of CO2 over the course of a year.

That’s almost 3% of the UK’s total annual carbon emissions – which is 826 million tonnes according to the research.

“People are beginning to open their eyes and see that if we continue to live the way we are our planet won’t be able to cope,” a spokesperson for Viessmann said.

This is not the first time the carbon footprint of the Information and Communications (ICT) Industry – which includes computers and phones but also infrastructure like data centres – has been highlighted.

Source: UK Mirror