Carbon Break Even Analysis: Environmental Impact of Tablets in Higher Education
Journal Title: International Journal of Advanced Computer Science & Applications - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 5
Abstract
With the growing pace of tablets use and the large focus it is attracting especially in higher education, this paper looks at an important aspect of tablets; their carbon footprint. Studies have suggested that tablets have positive impact on the environment; especially since tablets use less energy than laptops or desktops. Recent manufacturers’ reports on the carbon footprint of tablets have revealed that a significant portion, as much as 80%, of the carbon footprint of tablets comes from production and delivery as opposed to the operational life-cycle of these devices. Thus rending some of previous assumptions about the environmental impact of tablets questionable. This study sets to answer a key question: What is the break-even analysis point when saving on printed paper offsets the carbon footprint of producing and running the tablet in higher education. A review of the literature indicated several examples of tablet models and their carbon emission impact; this is compared to the environmental savings on paper that green courses could produce. The analysis of the carbon break-even point shows that even when considering some of the most efficient and least carbon impact tablets available on the market with a carbon-footprint production of 153Kg CO2e, the break-even point is 81.5 months; referring to 6 years, 9 months and 15 days of use. This exceeds the life-cycle of an average tablet of five years and average degree duration of four years. While tablets still have the least carbon-footprint impact compared to laptops and desktops, to achieve the break-even point of carbon neutral operations this study concludes that manufacturers need to find more environmentally efficient ways of production that would reduce the carbon-footprint product to a level that does not exceed 112.8kg CO2e.
Authors and Affiliations
Fadi Safieddine, Imad Nakhoul
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP101553
- DOI 10.14569/IJACSA.2016.070511
- Views 65
- Downloads 0
Efficient Feature Selection for Product Labeling over Unstructured Data
The paper introduces a novel feature selection algorithm for labeling identical products collected from online web resources. Product labeling is important for clustering similar or same products. Products blindly crawle...
To Generate the Ontology from Java Source Code
Software development teams design new components and code by employing new developers for every new project. If the company archives the completed code and components, they can be reused with no further testing unlike th...
A Review of Secure Authentication based e-Payment Protocol
The growth of e-commerce platform is increasing rapidly and possesses a higher level of hazard compared to standard applications as well as it requires a more prominent level of safety.Additionally, the transaction and t...
Quadrant Based WSN Routing Technique By Shifting Of Origin
A sensor is a miniaturized, low powered (basically battery powered), limited storage device which can sense the natural phenomenon or things and convert it into electrical energy or vice versa using transduction process....
Artificial Intelligence in Bio-Medical Domain
In this era and in the future, artificially intelligent machines are replacing and playing a key role to enhance human capabilities in many areas. It is also making life style better by providing convenience to all inclu...