TECNOBIOMA

1. We are human beings, therefore we generate waste

The production of waste is inherent to human beings, which is why the development of societies over time has repeatedly led to the same problem: what to do with the waste and residues produced by human activity? As societies have become more complex, the problem has also become more complex. If the Industrial Revolution initiated a process of environmental pollution derived from the waste produced by the technical inventions that made it possible, and the accelerated technological growth that we have been experiencing since the middle of the 20th century has turned important extensions of the planet's geography into junkyards, hyperdigitality and the exponential increase in computer systems have brought with them another type of waste: digital techno-waste. Given that, today, most of our social, cultural, political and economic practices, that is, most of human action, takes place in techno-computational ecosystems, we must ask ourselves what kind of waste is generated in these environments and what to do with it. This is the framework question that articulates our work.

2. Digitalisation and responsibility for the world| Contextualisation

For some years now, the issue of sustainability has been at the heart of the scientific, political, economic, technological, philosophical and cultural debate. Sustainability is a framework for thought and action aimed at meeting the needs of the present without compromising the resources of future society. Sustainability has become an ethical imperative and a social responsibility of all and for all. Sustainability is a political agenda that determines the actions of governments (Agenda 2030 and SDGs), the management of corporations (EGS criteria) and the lives of citizens.

In our hyper-technified society, sustainability and digitisation are mutually intertwined due to the ambivalent nature of digital and computational technologies. On the one hand, the development and deployment of certain technological innovations have contributed to environmental degradation, cultural inequalities and socio-economic imbalances. We can analyse in detail a particular case of pollution generated by a popular technology: cryptocurrencies. The mining of these electronic currencies, which is done by setting computers to solve very complex mathematical calculations, is responsible for the consumption of a very large amount of electricity. What's more: the mining of Bitcoin, the most popular of all currencies, consumes more water than 300 million rural inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, and more electricity than countries like Denmark or Chile. Its impact is such that some nations have outlawed the practice because of the ecological risk it poses (Chamanara et al., 2023).

On the other hand, however, innovative approaches based on the co-responsibility of all actors involved can make technology a key catalyst for achieving the environmental, social and economic (and also cultural, although not explicitly included) sustainability goals advocated by the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda. One example is 5G networks, which enable greater connectivity and lower latency while consuming less electricity. These networks can be used for real-time big data processing of urban transport, economising and streamlining schedules based on traffic flows in certain areas with a view to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These types of data applications are now known as green data.

This is the origin of the concept of sustainable and responsible digitisation, an initiative that is committed to a digitisation process that respects the environment and people, guaranteeing that natural resources are not depleted. In other words, its aim is to ensure a balanced and equitable technodigital development, combining the power of connectivity and progress with the care and repair of environmental and social ecosystems. However, alongside the green data and other eco-sustainable strategies, the concept of digital techno-waste prompts us to think of the junk/trash data. What are they and how to deal with them? How to deal with data-waste, including that which we generate when applying sustainability-oriented technologies?

3. The rubbish we don't see

The concept of techno-waste (or e-waste) has traditionally been linked to the accumulation of electronic devices, which remains a major problem today. It is estimated that more than 50 million tonnes of techno-waste are already generated each year, with a predicted 120 million tonnes by 2050, according to the UN (Global Compact, 2024). To tackle this problem, Telefónica, for example, is digitising its waste management in Europe and Latin America with a tool called GReTel (Gsion of Residues of Telephonic). However, hyperdigitality has broadened the concept of techno-waste to also include the set of digital interactions and data that we produce in enormous quantities every second: from the hundreds of emails we send per day to the thousands of photographs we accumulate before we get the one we think is ideal to share. Similarly, other forms of digital waste have been linked to infoxication, content clickbait and the fake news by deteriorating the quality of information and undermining the integrity of knowledge.

Every search we do, every file we send, everything represents a tiny electrical expense that, multiplied by the millions of cybernauts, ends up generating an amount of greenhouse gases equivalent to that of the aeronautical industry, which would mean that each Internet user would be responsible for some 414 kg of carbon dioxide (Griffiths, 2020). According to the report Data Never Sleeps  According to DOMO, in 2022 every minute of every day 5.9 million Google searches were made, 66,000 photos were uploaded to Instagram, 347,200 tweets were posted and 231.4 million emails were sent. Energy consumption and CO² associated with that amount of digital information is colossal (Enertic White Paper, 2022).

However, although the concept of techno-waste is not a genuine term, we believe and propose that it should be broadened to include the «social» waste and residues generated by hyperdigitality. Based on Saskia Sassen's (2014) idea of the «expelled», we believe that digital waste should not be limited to material elements (scrap) or informational elements (data), but should also include communities, individuals and, in general, human beings who have lost their capacity for action in the world (Harendt, 1958), who have been relegated to the simple role of «data producer/consumers» in the era of cognitive capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), who have been alienated and alienated by screens, without forgetting those affected by the various digital divides (geopolitical, socio-economic, generational). Techno-waste is everything that is used and then thrown away, forgotten or discarded. They are the invisible remains of the great digital machine. And it is precisely in this invisibility that we find one of the fundamental problems of digital techno-waste.

Indeed, digital techno-waste has an added problem: it remains almost invisible. Its intangibility makes it very difficult for citizens as a whole to identify it as techno-waste. The narrative of the intangibility of the digital, with its metaphors based on clouds, flows and virtual realities, has configured a collective imaginary in which the digital, as opposed to physical reality, lacks materiality. Digitalisation, which shortens distances and connects the world, has thus paradoxically distanced us from the impact that the digital has on our bodily existence and on the physical world in which we live. The small gesture that initiates a whole process of energy consumption, an apparently innocuous click, is thousands of kilometres away from the servers and technological infrastructures where digital waste accumulates. For their part, the social waste associated with the processes of hyperdigitality on a global scale are hardly identified as effects of our digital actions. We situate them as social, economic and political problems that it is up to «others» to solve.

Given this scenario, we are convinced that the starting coordinates for tackling the problem must be found, first and foremost, in citizens' awareness and re-appropriation of technology, and we ask ourselves: Do we know what techno-waste is associated with our forms of digital existence and, therefore, what our online lifestyle means for the environment and social systems? Are other, more eco-responsible forms of technological existence possible, as Flavia Costa (2021) states? If so, what could be our roadmap to reach that horizon based on a responsible digitalisation that lessens the problem of digital techno-waste?

 

4. Making the invisible visible
5. Acting on the symbolic plane

In the light of what has been said so far, we are convinced that digital techno-waste is not only a technological problem, but above all and fundamentally a cultural problem. For this reason, we believe that efforts should be concentrated in a very special way on the symbolic level, given that human beings are governed by symbols. Lists of actions or strategies, which can be found in various initiatives (e.g. UNESCO's TrashHack), compendiums of protocols and guidelines, run the risk of also becoming normative waste if a process of cultural transformation does not take place. It is therefore necessary to create narratives and stories that promote critical and ethical awareness, as well as the design and development of concepts that fully involve citizens. We appeal, then, to the new generations‘ capacity for critical imagination and epistemological innovation. The very term ’digital techno-waste‘ is a good example of how to shape a problem and make it visible through the delimitation of a concept. We ask ourselves, what other concepts should be shaped in relation to digital technotrash in order to define the problem even better and make it more visible? Could we speak of a ’digital socio-trash' in order to bring to light the social expulsions to which it also gives rise? We are convinced that technological innovation must necessarily be accompanied by an epistemological and intellectual innovation that allows us to think about technology from other parameters.

2. Acting at the educational level

If we really want a profound and effective change, the focus must be on future generations, who must be the drivers of the transformation. Already in 2002 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published The challenges of information and communication technologies in education, a report that listed a series of recommendations for the proper implementation of ICT in education systems, including pillars such as teacher training or the basic facilities needed (Gallego Arrufat, 2013, p. 33). Since then, many countries have implemented digital technologies in their curricula through pedagogical dynamics. This fact contrasts, however, with some current cases -for example, Finland- that are eliminating all traces of digitalisation from their curricula. From our point of view, this decision is a serious mistake. On the contrary, we firmly believe that technological -digital- knowledge should be included in the educational trajectory from an early age. The latest education law, for example, introduces Technology and Digitalisation as a compulsory subject within the ESO school curriculum. This is a step, but it is not enough, since it is in childhood that good habits are generated, and it is therefore crucial to have an impact on these stages, which are so sensitive to the possible development of behaviour and responsible, fair and equitable uses of technology and the world.

However, we believe that this technological knowledge cannot be confined to the acquisition of skills (e.g., the acquisition of new technologies).skills) technical. On the contrary, technology must also be approached as a «problem» to be thought about and discussed from a critical perspective. An education based solely on knowing how to handle, design or develop technological tools, however sophisticated they may be, will only lead to a complacent society with no capacity to go beyond the «technological system» in which it is embedded. As young people born in the digital age, we can sense that the existing problem in the implementation of this type of measures is the lack of interdisciplinarity when it comes to considering crossbreeding between fields of knowledge. We therefore advocate a complete redefinition of the education system and the articulation of areas of knowledge in order to move towards a new paradigm in which technology is instituted as a transversal and cross-disciplinary parameter.

3. Acting at the regulatory and legislative level

Just as a doctor monitors the different cholesterol and blood sugar levels of her patients, biologists, environmentalists and other scientists monitor the levels of the earth and the ecosystem. For this reason, we must establish digital techno-waste indices, just as there are threshold levels for triglycerides and CO². It would be possible to calculate this index by means of three variables: D, I and T.

Firstly, D - waste - would calculate the amount of waste generated by a user - individually or as a group - during a given period of time. This variable would record, for example, how many grams of CO² specifically involves its digital footprint. The second variable would be I - psychosocial impact. This component is somewhat more abstract and would require different indicators, such as the number of real versus digital connections, daily time connected versus daily time spent offline, their place in the digital divide, the ease of renewing or accessing new-generation technological devices and systems, and so on. Finally, there would be the variable T -time-, which would delimit the measurement time. Thus, the following formula would result:

ITB (Techno-waste index) = (D+I)/T

This index has, in fact, a dual purpose: on the one hand, to produce useful knowledge for the design of policies aimed at reducing digital techno-waste (material, informational, social, cultural) and, on the other hand, to help articulate legislation to support it, as well as to control it, stipulating the relevant sanctions and recommendations in the event of exceeding the permitted index.

There are already specific legislative codes for the technological field. In the EU area, the European Commission proposed the first ever regulation on artificial intelligence in 2021: the EU AI Act. In Spain, supervisory bodies have also been created -although the laws operate at the European level-, such as the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence. This places Europe in general and Spain in particular at the forefront of technology regulation and are, therefore, models of sustainable technological development. We want to stress the importance of creating and maintaining up-to-date regulations that incorporate the different dimensions (material, informational, social) affected by digital techno-waste.