Why eco-friendly technology is mandatory for today’s generation?
“The only technology that helps to create a plethora of business and employment opportunity while promoting the green environment, is serving good for the society and, therefore, the sustainability.” - Anuj Somany, Author
What is eco-friendly technology?
Eco-friendly technology has many names – clean tech, environmental tech, green tech – but they all mean the same: environmentally friendly technology that has been created with a specific focus on helping to preserve our environment through a combination of increased energy efficiency and a reduction in any harmful waste when operating.
Green-tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.John DoerrInvestor, a chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins
These green technologies relate to an ever-evolving group of innovations, practices, methods, new materials, energy-generation and waste reduction techniques. Eco-friendly technologies are designed to consider both the long and short-term effects that they have on the environment by considering health and safety, renewable resource usage, energy generation and their ability to be recycled.
In recent years, there have been great strides in bringing us new products and ideas in the renewable energy sector, waste management, water purification, electronics and transportation. Eco-friendly innovations and technologies are complex, but they are usually focused on the following areas:
- Energy efficiency and renewable energy;
- Eco-friendly materials – Recycled, recyclable or biodegradable;
- Reduction of waste and pollution;
- Reduction in harmful emissions;
- Multi-functionality;
- Low-impact manufacturing.
The importance of green technology in today’s world
Eco-friendly and sustainable technology are hugely important in today’s modern world. It can hardly be ignored how much momentum that ‘going green’ has rightfully earned over recent years, fuelled by the recognition that running businesses and going about our daily lives in a wasteful manner which is harmful to the environment, is quite simply not sustainable.
There are many sectors which have harmful effects on the environment, one of the most common being transport. In the UK, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s 2020 Final Emissions Report shows that in both industrial sources and end-user sectors, transport was the most significant contributor to greenhouse gases, with the end-user emissions contributing to 28% of the total output.
According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, 84% of the world still relies entirely on fossil fuels which are non-renewable and unsustainable. This damages our environment and is extremely detrimental to our future.
Green technology offers us the opportunity to dig ourselves out of the environmental predicament that we have created. It allows us to create and take advantage of better, more sustainable methods, products and waste reduction that will benefit the planet for millennia to come. One fantastic example of this lies in the recent shift in inner-city transportation. With the meteoric rise of electronic vehicles has come the e-scooter revolution. These new eco-scooters have been a hit all over the globe, with a study in Paris reporting that e-scooters were responsible for saving over 330 tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Is the future of eco-friendly technology bright or dark?
There is definitely a very healthy future ahead for eco-friendly technologies. In order for something to really catch on, it has to have both social and economic benefits: eco-friendly technology has both.
This is reflected in the market value of sustainable technologies, which was valued at just $8.79 billion globally back in 2019 but is projected to reach $48.36 billion by 2027 – a growth of 24.3% in just 8 years! Aside from the obvious, why is this growth important? Because in order to see a wide-reaching, global take up in the development and application of green technologies, it has to be not only financially viable, but financially attractive.
Another major driver in this positive uptake of green technologies is the EU’s 2030 Climate Target Plan. They have set a goal for all member states to reduce their carbon emissions by 2030 to 55% below the figures recorded in 1990. Germany has taken this a step further by setting themselves the aggressive goal of becoming greenhouse gas neutral by 2045, and cutting these emissions by at least 65% by only 2030.
At Future Processing, we have been a champion of green and sustainable software for some time as we see it as not only our duty, but a crucial philosophy which will lead us all to create a better future to be as green as possible. Data centres and complex networks have a huge part to play in excessive energy consumption and we are excited to search for ever better ways to carry out our activities.
When thinking about your own green eco-friendly tech solutions, it’s important not to see them in isolation from your current operations, but as part of them. Green tech should be a key aspect of your digital transformation strategy, built into every process as much as possible.
Summary
Overall, it’s safe to say that while there are undoubtedly lots of climate-based issues in the world today that need addressing, all is not yet lost. We see a bright future ahead just so long as everyone plays their part in whichever way they can. We should all work towards building sustainable, eco-technologies into our industries in order to make tomorrow better, one small step at a time.