Lesson video

Hello and welcome to lesson six on the environment, part of this unit on the impact of technology.

My name is Irfan and I'm going to be your computing teacher for this lesson.

In this lesson, you will explain the environmental effects of the use of technology, and we'll discover the reality of technology's impact on the environment.

In this part of the lesson, you will learn about how technology, if you strategically can be used to protect the environment, and can be a preserver rather than a destroyer.

In 2004, Lord Broers who was the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the chairman of the House of Lords science and technology committee, expressed a view that technology can and should hold the key to the future of the human race.

Lord Broers did a series of reflections for the BBC on this subject, putting for the idea that technology could save the planet.

There are a number of technologies and movements to support this notion, let's start with task one.

For each of the following technologies on the worksheet, describe the benefit and a potential limitation.

These technologies include renewable energy such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric.

Environmental monitoring, ensuring that environment related laws and regulations are being followed, for example, through carbon emissions or hunting energy smart homes, so devices like smart thermostats and motion activated lighting, the sharing economy so services like free cycle, Uber and Airbnb, which is defined by their peer to peer model of purchasing goods and showing access to goods from others, rather than from traditional business models.

And finally, electric cars.

Remember that you can use the internet to help you research the benefits and limitations to each if you cannot think of any yourself.

Pause the video now to complete the task.

When you are finished resume the video to check your answers.

Great work, let's go through the answers, for renewable energy.

Although it is clean and cheap to run, it can also be expensive to initially set up.

For environmental monitoring, it does help to raise awareness which directly reduces the environmental impact by changing people's behaviour.

But its limitations are that it requires some level of expertise and environmental risk assessments can also be costly.

For energy smart homes the benefit is that reduces energy running costs, but the equipment or installation of the equipment can be expensive.

And as it relies on an internet connection, it can be unreliable and also prone to security risk from hackers.

The sharing economy provides flexibility, convenience and is often more sustainable than corporate competitors.

However, the limitations are that these services are not always safe or regulated and the reliability of the product is not always consistent and cannot be guaranteed.

Finally, for electric cars, they produce fewer emissions and are cheaper to run than conventional cars.

They are also quieter too, but their limitations include the fact that they may not be able to go very long distances, lack of charging points, or places to get the vehicle maintained or fixed.

Unlike most of the others we have seen, the initial costs are high.

For technologies that can positively impact the environment.

The initial cost and affordability can discourage people from buying or using these products.

In this next part of the lesson, you will understand what is meant by e-waste and its effects.

Technology can have negative effects on individuals and the environment they live in.

E-waste is caused by disposal of electronics sometimes contain poisonous and often toxic chemicals, which can be harmful to the environment.

The consumption of resources and energy caused by technology production and its use is also damaging.

E-waste is harmful because of the use of non recyclable materials, the depletion of rare chemical elements and the harmful effects of pollution caused by disposal and recycling to the environment and the health of recyclers through the exposure to poisonous toxins.

According to research conducted by the world counts, the total e-waste for the first half of 2020 is 25 million tonnes.

The tonnage of small equipment for example, already disposed of in the first six months of the year was 9.

2 5 million tonnes.

Just to contextualise one compact car weighs roughly 1.

5 tonnes and important question to ask yourself is where does this e-waste actually end up? Around the world in often developing countries, informal recyclers are making a living for themselves by taking out reusable parts or harvesting the precious metals from e-waste.

E-waste is a global problem with about 40 million tonnes being produced every year.

And this number is rising.

These informal recyclers often injure themselves from flying metal and glass, but are more worryingly making themselves unhealthy, as they often have elevated levels of heavy metals, for example, lead, cadmium and mercury in their blood.

Furthermore, as a result of harvesting precious metals, they are also contaminating the environment they work and often living.

Unsafe exposure to heavy metals can cause problems to human health, specifically to the brain, kidneys, lungs, liver and blood, where it can cause a number of health problems including cancer.

More worryingly, organisations such as Amnesty International have reported on the use of child labourers for mining and harvesting precious metals use for technology in often poor working conditions.

Knowing that our upgrade culture has a direct impact on others around the world and the environment we live in.

With this makes you think twice about your use and disposal of electronics.

In this next part of the lesson, you will learn about how the internet uses power.

The cloud refers to the interconnected data centres around the world.

Data Centres require large amounts of energy to keep them running 24 seven, but in addition to this, large amounts of energy are used to keep them cool to prevent downtime through overheating.

It is estimated that the energy required to stream 24 minutes of video is roughly the equivalent amount of energy required to make two cups of tea.

This also extends to our use of the internet for messaging online gaming, shopping, storing documents, including videos and photos in the cloud.

Some energy use the power data centre comes from fossil fuels.

However, large organisations such as Amazon have pledged to reduce their carbon footprint by switching to renewable energy sources in the future.

What actions could we in data centres take to reduce environmental impacts in relation to streaming? Well, not watching videos in high definition, using Wi-Fi rather than mobile internet, switching off our devices rather than putting them onto standby mode.

Using renewable energy or energy from providers who carbon offset, and removing features like auto play videos and songs, or infinite scrolling apps that refresh and update live content.

In this final part of the lesson, we're going to wrap things up with a task on environmental impact.

The worksheet presents an example long form on so on the environmental impacts of technology.

On the worksheet fill in the missing words.

The bottom of the sheet has a word bank to help you decide which words go in the spaces.

Pause the video now to complete the task.

When you finish unpause the video to check your answers.

The use of technology has marked effects on the consumption of the Earth's natural resources, and the production and disposal of mobile devices exemplifies the negative impacts it has had.

Technology has also had numerous positive impacts on the environment from the reduction of paper consumption to the increase monitoring and testing capabilities.

Technology and its uses lead to consumption of Earth's natural resources.

Technologically enhanced farming is on the rise, in which managing large farms is made much easier with the help of digitally assisted techniques.

To make room for more of these farms, we are cutting away large areas of forests, destroying one of Earth's natural defences against carbon emissions, and destroying ecosystems. Technology also leads to pollution levels, and mobile technology and the culture of upgrading add to carbon emissions.

Factories creating these devices consume vast amounts of energy, and the precious metals used to make mobile phones create toxic byproducts.

These devices are sometimes disposed of improperly, causing even more chemicals to pollute the air and the soil.

Although these effects are extremely harmful technology does also allow us to measure and monitor the environment to track and combat these effects.

Technological advancements have brought new ways to monitor the effects that society is having on the planet.

The Internet allows remote monitoring stations to send data back to labs for analysis.

We can use algorithms and data centres to perform analysis and make predictions that humans alone could not.

The digital use and storage of data has led to a reduced need for paper.

The prevalence of digital information storage has had a marked effect on the amount of paper we consume, helping to reduce deforestation.

The capacities of hard drives have grown significantly and we are now able to store on a small computer the same amount of information as a forest worth of paper.

More services are using digital technology to reduce paper consumption.

So the use of technologies also reducing deforestation.

The pollution and waste produced as byproducts of the culture of upgrading mobile phones are significant.

However, technology also allows us to test hypotheses in new ways and to provide evidence that law makers need to change legislation around pollution and global warming.

Technologically enhanced farming is also on the rise, leading to deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats.

Although the reduced need for paper to digitally stored information has meant that there is less need to deforest other areas.

Technology and the environment have a complicated relationship.

And as a society, we should be encouraging the positive effects and acting to prevent the negatives.

Good work.

How many did you get correct.

Thank you so much for watching this lesson on the environment.

There's a lot to think about here, but I hope you've enjoyed it.

Remember to complete the exit quiz for this lesson, and not to mention shale work on oak national.

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