White paper – How does orange business eco-design its solutions and help its customers eco-design their applications?

A digital strategy with widespread impacts

Every digital service depends on numerous components that originate from raw materials and metals. These resources are crucial for producing processors, equipment, network infrastructures, and constructing buildings (such as data centers) and other structures.

These components, utilized at various stages of the service’s lifecycle, have different environmental impacts, including but not limited to:

• The use of large quantities of natural, scarce, or stressed resources during the manufacturing phases of equipment (rare metals, water, etc.). For instance, a semiconductor factory uses between 7,500 and 15,000 cubic meters of ultra-pure water daily, equivalent to 2 to 5 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• The consumption of carbon-based energy for manufacturing, operations, usage, and transporting equipment from production sites to consumption sites. In 2020, digital technology accounted for 2.5% of France’s carbon footprint.
• Land pollution during the extraction of raw materials and the end-of-life phase of services, including the production and disposal of hazardous electronic waste. In the European Union, 160,000 laptops are discarded daily, and 3 million tons of IT waste are generated annually.

Minimizing the environmental impact of a digital service requires a comprehensive understanding of its entire lifecycle.