Introduction

Digital service eco-design aims to focus on reducing environmental impacts. This expression emerged in 2014 and was consecrated by the community in 2017.

Eco design is about creating digital applications without destroying, while improving the customer experience and preserving the planet.

Observation

The climate is evolving on our planet which is causing lots of changes such as :

• sea level rise;

• increase in extreme weather events;

• drastic reduction of biodiversity;

We mainly monitor this through GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

IT impacts

IT is often considered virtual or immaterial. As if digital services could run without hardware.

Actually, IT has impacts on the following environmental indicators (but not only): - Abiotic resource depletion (consumption of non-renewable resources) - Global warming (through greenhouse gas) - Primary energy consumption (coal, gas, oil, uranium...) - Tension on freshwater

The various current scientific studies estimate that that digital technology is responsible for 2.1 to 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. If “IT” was a country, it would have about 2 to 3 times the footprint of France.

Sources of the impacts

The digital world is usually broken down into 3 tiers: user equipment, data centers, and networks. And it's distributed as follows :

The main impact is on user equipment especially at the stage of their manufacture The renewal of equipment accentuates the environmental impact. We change our equipment not because they are not working anymore but mainly because they are too slow or not fashionable anymore. This is called the aesthetic obsolescence or psychological obsolescence.

Challenges

By eco-designing digital services (applications, websites or software), we allow them to operate on older devices and less efficient networks. Like that, we extend their lifespan and participate in limiting their renewal.