Shocking Facts Wasteful Use of Water for Internet

Researchers at Imperial College London received attention during the last year they stated that in order to download one gigabyte (GB) of data from the internet, it takes up to 200 liters of water.

This fact is quite surprising. Because, in 2015 alone, smartphone users in Western Europe generally use 1.9 GB of data per month per person. While in the US, according to data from Ericsson, the figure could reach 3.7 GB per month per person. Imagine the amount of water consumed.

To note, every time you open the social media, e-mail, or streaming video, you will receive or exchange data with the data center (data center) somewhere in the world, a center of very large server filled with hungry computer electricity, heat producer.

As this is running, you can log n to your e-mail or via smartphone or computer, wherever you are, because e-mail is not stored on the hard drive, but in the data center.

So, what to do with water?

The researchers estimate that the possibility of water used in the process is essential to keep the data center to stay cool, or furthermore, the production of large amounts of electricity needed so that the server can still operate.

Worrying about water consumption

One of the researchers at Imperial College, Bora Ristic, issued a warning. Ristic said that research on the amount of water needed to cool the servers can go down to one liter per gigabyte. But that should be highlighted, researchers have yet to discover the source of the water used to cool the data center.

"The initial research is very useful to know the scale of the problem," says technology expert Bill Thompson told the BBC.

"It is very difficult to change the behavior of consumers, you want is a change in behavior of the parties running the data center," he said.

ReadWrite: data center Facebook

"It's hard to imagine if I was so scared streaming video just because I am worried about the consumption of water. I could have my pick of video hosting services that claim to be environmentally conscious," he continued.

Kaveh Madani from the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, said, in fact the situation is improving since the studies were conducted.

"Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google has made significant improvements related to water as a cooling source of its data center," he said.

"They are investing in this respect, because they appreciate the problems of water availability. They also better understand the reputational risk than ever before. If they do not pay attention to the influence of the environment, damaging their good name."

Nevertheless, the demand of the data center continues to rise, the same thing also happens related to environmental issues.

Madani added, "There is an increasing use of services means higher, and the heat generated and the energy required also increases, it affects to the environment, carbon footprint, and water use."

"There should be a serious concern related to technology improvements in this regard."

Cool Naturally

Lingungan friendly data centers are not yet familiar sounds, but the world's leading technology companies should be aware that it is necessary seriously.

They could use renewable energy or choose to put their data centers in environments that naturally help the cooling process. It is the promise of some parties that improve environment-friendly credentials.

In February 2016, Microsoft completed testing pilot data center under water, the water surrounding the concept is to make the servers cool, instead of using the mechanism of the air conditioner or air alternative energy drain.

Facebook opened a data center near the Arctic Circle in Lulea, northern Sweden in 2013 for the same reason, the cold temperatures provide natural cooling.

Data centers (data center) up in the Arctic Circle.

The data center now employs 150 people and is 100 percent driven by water.

The company also began to build the campus data center covering an area of ​​57,000 square meters in Clonee, Republic of Ireland, which will be 100 percent use of wind power, as they appear in Fort Worth and Altoona.

Meanwhile, the enterprise data center Green Mountain which took over the former NATO ammunition storage facility in the Norwegian mountains, states have been using water from the surrounding area, with a temperature of eight degrees, so that the place to stay cool without the need for additional energy.

Apple also increasingly leading to environmentally friendly power, by declaring all of its data centers are now 100 percent use of renewable energy.

Servers were placed under the sea by Microsoft.

And this month Google announced six data centers are now completely not create waste dumped into the ground.

"In the world, the waste generated 85 percent of our data center is not discharged into the ground," wrote Rachel Futrell, technical program manager for Google on his blog.

The Wind Farm

Greenpeace had campaigned Clean our Cloud, though had not been very active for some time, but they said it will release the latest report next month, analysts said Gary Cook of the environmental groups.

"A number of companies are now open his eyes that they can do things that are very large by using renewable energy," he said.

"Large companies are opening the door for other parties related to the use of renewable energy, we have witnessed this many in the US in the last 3-5 years."

Although Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) generally supported the steps taken by large companies on renewable energy, but there is one company that he denounced, namely Amazon Web Services.

Illustration windmills.

"Amazon's growth is five to six times the amount of spending that they spent using renewable energy," said Cook.

"We want them to be more transparent," added Cook.

Amazon itself says it is committed to "long-term promise" to create the infrastructure to be 100 percent use of renewable energy.

They hope to reach the level of 40 percent by the end of 2016, as written on the website.

Amazon also has three wind farms and one solar panel fields in the US, which they say is capable of supplying electricity for 150,000 homes.