Datacenters consume vast amounts of carbon, generating an estimated 2% of global greenhouse emissions. The energy required to operate and cool large datacenters contributes to much of this, but a less discussed aspect of the environmental impacts of datacenters are their embedded carbon. Embedded carbon refers to the greenhouse gas emissions involved in the production and disposal of products, in this case high performance computers. To address these concerns, researchers have begun to investigate repurposing discarded equipment, including smartphones [2], as a method of reducing the lifetime carbon impact of datacenters.
These are ideas that we are also interested in exploring at the UBC eKitchen, where we hope to build a system from disused equipment. We are currently on the look out for appropriate disused computers and phones to use as part of this project, and are enthusiastically accepting donations!
Specifically, we are looking for the following items:
- smart phones
- laptops
- personal computers
- disused lab equipment
Please contact us to arrange a donation, or stop by en eKitchen lab or event.
[1] Koomey, Jonathan, and Eric Masanet. “Does not compute: Avoiding pitfalls assessing the Internet’s energy and carbon impacts.” Joule 5.7 (2021): 1625-1628.
[2] Switzer, Jennifer, et al. “Junkyard computing: Repurposing discarded smartphones to minimize carbon.” Proceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 2. 2023.