Environmental impact of e-commerce and other sustainability
implications of the information economy
By: Jih Chang Yang
Industrial Technology Research Institute
Working Paper of the Research Group on the Global Future
Center for Applied Policy Research (C•A•P)
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Technologies at the close of the 20th century are a very different breed compared to
technologies past, as they move inexorably toward the very core of fundamental
knowledge – quantum mechanics driving semiconductors, nanotechnology driving
materials and manufacturing, optics driving communications, genomics driving
biotechnologies, etc. Significant advances nowadays are those made at the “bottom” –
molecular and atomic levels. The results are an explosive growth of knowledge and the
ways in which we use the newfound knowledge.
While new and rapidly advancing knowledge will be sure to become a dominant force
shaping the future of mankind, experience tells us that advancing technology always
bring side-effects. In the euphoria over the unprecedented opportunities brought on by the
advent of the information economy, the tendencies are to overlook these side-effects, or
simply to dismiss them so they wouldn’t spoil the fun. But they are there. Lets look at the
environmental impact of e-commerce, for example.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF E-COMMERCE
It is hard to imaging the “environmental impact” of e-commerce. After all, it doesn’t emit
any pollutants or uses much energy and natural resources. It would also be hard to
imagine it connected to the now familiar topics of sustainability such as climate change,
and biodiversity and habitat losses. But their environmental impacts are there. And the
impacts are not only significant, their nature and magnitude are such that the ways to
resolve them are by no means evident or familiar to us.
We should be mindful about e-commerce for it is by far the biggest “killer app” of the
digital revolution, if for nothing else. In the next four to five years, depending on which
market research organization you believe, the size o