5 Environmental impacts
5.1 Impacts for servers and storage products
As other ICT, the most relevant stages of their life cycle for servers and data storage products are material extraction (mining and extraction process) and use due to intensive energy consumption. This can be simplified by the results of the previous Ecodesign preparatory study for servers and data storage products, as shown in Figure 19 and Figure 20 for respectively blade system servers and rack servers (European Commission, 2015b).
Figure 19. Distribution of environmental impacts by life cycle phase for blade server system. Source: (European Commission, 2015b)
Figure 20. Distribution of environmental impacts by life cycle phase for rack servers. The text for pillar 3 and 4 is missing in Figure 22. It should be “of which, electricity (in primary energy MJ) as in Figure 21. Source: (European Commission, 2015b)
For more details on the distribution of these impacts on the different components of servers and storage products, CEDaCI has assessed the design and material composition of two servers (named SV.1.1 and SV.1.2) and two switches (WeLOOP, 2020). The equipment was dismantled and the environmental impacts of reusing and replacing components were assessed by screening-LCA to identify the environmental hotspots (WeLOOP, 2020). In addition, the motherboard (main PCB) from SV.1.1 was characterised to study the material composition.
The assessment does not include all life cycle stages, as described in Figure 21:
Figure 21. Life Cycle stages included in the assessment - ‘greyed out’ stages excluded (WeLOOP, 2020).
The results show the need to reduce the use of primary raw materials for servers and switches, especially for PCBs
Figure 37 and 38 in the referenced report
It is also concluded that the PCBs are both the component with the highest environmental impact and with the highest scrap price. PCBs have been identified as the most environmentally impactful components of DC equipment and the ones with the highest economic and environmental benefits if recycled by take-back schemes. In addition, it is stated that 85% of the embedded emissions related to data centres stem from IT, largely because the IT equipment is regularly replaced over the facility’s lifetime.
5.2 Impacts from mining
The EU’s industry and economy are reliant on international markets to provide access to many important raw materials since they are produced and supplied by third countries. Although the domestic production of certain critical raw materials exists in the EU, notably hafnium, in most cases the EU is dependent on imports from non-EU countries.
The supply of many critical raw materials is highly concentrated. For example, China provides 98% of the EU’s supply of rare earth elements (REE), Turkey provides 98% of the EU’s supply of borate, and South Africa provides 71% of the EU’s needs for platinum and an even higher share of the platinum group metals iridium, rhodium, and ruthenium. The EU relies on single EU companies for its supply of hafnium and strontium. The risks associated with the concentration of production are in many cases compounded by low substitution and low recycling rates.
According to JRC ICT Task Force report on Material efficiency (JRC, 2023b), and many other scientific sources, the main environmental impacts of mining activities include:
- Production of large quantities of extractive waste and tailings: Gold and silver are among the most wasteful metals, with more than 99 percent of ore extracted ending up as waste. According to the Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document for the Management of Waste from Extractive Industries, some of the metals used in ICT devices such as gold, copper, tungsten has a very high residue-to-product ratio.
- Risks from collapse of Extractive Waste Facilities: extractive waste facilities (EWF) in form of dams are built to retain wastes resulting from the treatment of minerals (e.g. slurried extractive waste from mineral processing). These dams can be huge (tens of metres high and heaps even more than 100 m). The collapse of any type of EWF can have short-term and long-term effects.
- Short-term consequences may include: dangerous flow slides; release of hazardous substances; flooding; blanketing/suffocating; crushing and destruction; cut-off of infrastructure; poisoning; casualties.
- Long-term effects may include: metal accumulation in plants and animals, contamination of soil, contamination of groundwater, loss of animal life, adverse effects on human health.
- Acid mine drainage (AMD): this is one of the most serious environmental impacts associated with mining. At metal mines, the target ore (like gold, silver, copper, etc) is often rich in sulfide minerals such us pyrite FeS2 or pyrrhotite. When the mining process exposes the sulphides to water and air (oxygen), together they react to form sulfuric acid. This acid can dissolve other harmful metals and metalloids (like arsenic) from the surrounding rock. The presence of acid-ingesting bacteria often speeds the process. Waste rock piles, other exposed waste, mine openings, and pit walls are often the source of acidic effluents from a mine site. Acid mine drainage is especially harmful because it can occur indefinitely - long after mining has ended.
- Metal deposition and toxicity: Most mining operations use metals, reagents, or other compounds to process valuable minerals. Certain reagents or heavy metals, such as cyanide and mercury, are particularly valued for their conductive properties and thus are frequently used. The release of metals into the environment can also be triggered by acid drainage or through accidental releases from mine tailings impoundments. While small amounts of heavy metals are considered essential for the survival of many organisms, large quantities are toxic. Few terrestrial and aquatic species are known to be naturally tolerant of heavy metals, although some have adapted over time.
- Loss of Biodiversity and Habitat: the most obvious impact to biodiversity from mining is the removal of vegetation, which in turn alters the availability of food and shelter for wildlife. At a broader scale, mining may impact biodiversity by changing species composition and structure. For example, acid drainage and high metal concentrations in rivers generally result in an impoverished aquatic environment.
Finally, other social impacts are associated to the extraction of materials used in ICT. These include occupational health and safety violations that have direct effects on worker’s lives; employment conditions including long hours, low wages and temporary contracts: forced labour in factories, smelting facilities and mines.
5.3 Impacts from manufacturing
The EU is largely dependent on other countries (mainly from South-East Asia) for supply of high-tech components and assemblies. Relevant environmental impacts for ICT devices are associated to the manufacturing of their semiconductor-based components, such as Integrated Circuits (ICs), and other complex components, such as electronic displays and Printed Circuit Boards.
JRC ICT Task force report describes the manufacture process. The two stages of manufacturing, wafer production and packaging, are not usually done in the same plants. There are two types of production plants involved in the semiconductor industry:
- front-end plants, producing wafers (such as a crystalline silicon) containing a large number of semiconductor chips and,
- back-end plants that package the chips. The package provides protection and electrical connections when the chip is integrated onto a circuit board. The same chips can be embedded in different electronic equipment.
According to JRC (2023b) the main impacts related from semiconductor manufacturing processes are:
- Global Warming: it is the most common indicator used to report on environmental changes. In the microelectronic industry it is all the more important that there is a huge amount of electricity consumed during the energy intensive production processes of semiconductor components. Moreover, a considerable quantity of PFCs is consumed during the manufacturing process.
- Abiotic depletion: chip manufacturing consumes both energy and mineral resources. Other than coal, rare gases, precious metals and REEs should be mentioned. It is a crucial topic for the whole electronic industry.
- Water eutrophication: the quality of water surrounding microelectronic plants is largely damaged by intensive usage of nitrogen and phosphorous acids, especially in wet cleaning processes.
- Imported volume of raw water: stress on water is mainly due to ultrapure water used for production and general plant functioning. Manufacturers are more and more challenged on water control issues.
- Human eco-toxicity: manufacturing, especially for the semiconductor package, rejects a large range of metals, in different physical forms (particulate and solid). The release of metals in water induces potential effects on toxicity. Other specific liquids (resins, solvents, silicon products, bases and acids) must be controlled regarding potential toxic effects during manufacturing and use in plants. The application of the RoHS directive alone strongly contributes to reducing impacts on human health, especially during end-of-life treatment.
- Photochemical oxidation: several steps of wafer and package processing consume solvents producing VOCs and plant facilities damage the quality of air (boilers, air refrigerators). Photochemical oxidation (also called summer smog) accounts for these pollutions.
- Local electricity consumption: this indicator is the most suitable to account for the total energy consumed by equipment and facilities during manufacturing. It helps to identify hotspots.
5.4 Impacts from use phase
There is no impact of CRMs in the use phase. The materials are embedded in the products and are in general not released to the environment during use. However, the use of CRMs is of importance for the performance of the product in the use phase, but this is out of scope for this study.
5.5 Impacts at end-of-life
The end-of-life treatment of CRM’s is of great importance for the supply situation for CRMs. If the products/components are reused and the materials recycled the need for “new” CRMs will be lower and the supply risks reduced.
Since enterprise servers are Business to Business products (B2B), a large number of the equipment are managed by Original Equipment manufacturers (OEMs) all the way until their end-of-life rarely reaching recycling facilities and mostly having reusable parts harvested and tested for their possible reuse for second-hand equipment before the rest of the server parts reach the waste treatment sites (JRC, 2020b).
Based on experience with industry, it is seen that servers which are refreshed may be redeployed for less critical applications or sold second hand to other businesses, particularly in less developed markets. Servers high metal content also means they have a scrap value. Furthermore, OEMs are aware of the economic value of their products even when they are technologically obsolete or no longer function. In summary, servers and storage products may not be the main source of e-waste due to their B2B nature.
Various sources conclude that currently there is a very low recycling rate for CRMs (see section 5.9) and that large amounts of valuable materials are wasted at end-of life.
JRC ICT Task Force report (2023b) highlights the issues, including environmental concerns, of CRM recycling. CRMs only constitute a very low share of the total materials in servers and data storage and there needs to be a critical mass of waste to extract the CRMs from the end-of-life waste stream.
In some cases, the recycling of some CRMs is not compatible with the recycling of other materials. For example, PCBs may contain a very small quantity of tantalum which requires a different recycling process than that for the treatment of precious material such as gold. As a result, CRMs are not recovered and fed back to the production stage sufficiently to meet demand. The JRC report (2023b) also points at the complex structure of WM-PCBs is the main obstacle to recovery metals from it.
Recycling processes produce environmental impacts as well, depending on the process used. JRC describes a typical PCB recycling process:
- hydrometallurgical process generates a significant amount of leachates
- pyrometallurgical process is very energy intensive
- bio-metallurgical (biological), with the use of microorganisms for the recovery of metals in a simple, less environmentally impactful, and cost-effective manner
The JRC report (2023b) also indicates that merely 25% of e-waste
E-waste is addressed by the Basel convention https://www.basel.int/Implementation/Ewaste/Overview/tabid/4063/Default.aspx
JRC highlights that e-waste still ends up being exported illegally, and the use of informal recycling methods which have worse environmental impact than formal recycling processes. Informal recycling methods is attractive from a cost perspective, with the use of nonskilled manual labour, and a disregard of environmental or health hazards. The methods include heating circuit boards by blowtorch method, stripping of metals in open-pit acid baths to recover gold and other metals and open-air burning of components (cables, PCBs, plastic metal assemblies. When toxic material disperses via open burning, it can be found in air, water and sediments near recycling sites, causing damages not only to the workers but residents in the surrounding areas via inhalation, dermal exposure, or the soil-crop-food pathway due to the wind patterns.
5.6 Conclusions Environmental Impacts
The findings of this section highlight the main environmental hotspots of the life cycle of servers and storage products.
When not considering energy consumption (not in scope of this study the most significant impacts is relate to the materials in the products (mining and extraction activities) and recycling.
The importance of the impacts from mining and extracting activities reinforces the need for durability, repairability, and reuse requirements.
In addition, traceability requirements such as chain of custody or due diligence requirements could help reduce the supply of minerals from high environmental risk areas or from illegal mining. Chain of custody refers to the document trail recording the sequence of companies and individuals which have custody of minerals as they move through a supply chain. Due diligence also covers the identification and assessment of risks and measures for mitigating them.
As to manufacturing, information requirements based on digital product passport could be explored as a tool to gather information and eventually setting further measures.
Impacts at end-of-life support the need to design the products for optimizing their recyclability. Apart from that, regulations within the ecodesign framework have limited or null capacity to mitigate the issues found around recycling in developing countries. However, this could be addressed by other measures such as public procurement.