By Vincent Loiseau.
According to the Robert Dictionary, software is a set of programs and procedures required to operate a computer system. There are many programming languages used to create software. Whether imperative, declarative, functional, logical, object-oriented or event-driven, all languages are ultimately interpreted by a processor as binary code (a sequence of 0s and 1s). From a purely physical point of view, binary code is nothing more than a sequence of electrical state changes. As a result, software is often perceived as immaterial and, at first glance, has no direct impact on the environment.
In 2019, the digital industry accounted for 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, almost double those generated by the air transport industry. If software itself has no direct impact on these emissions, where does the impact come from?
In its study on the environmental footprint of digital technology, the GreenIT.fr collective reveals that almost 70% of the industry’s impact is linked to users, who own over 34 billion digital devices, with the other impacts shared between networks and data centers. The number of devices per person continues to grow, and reports from the Shift Project estimate that it could reach 50 billion by 2025, or even 100 billion by 2030. The manufacture of these devices, which is the most polluting phase, adds considerably to the environmental footprint of digital technology.
A key factor contributing to this over-consumption of hardware is the proliferation of bloatware. This term refers to increasingly resource-hungry software, which requires ever more powerful hardware to function properly. Over the years, despite the exponential increase in processor power (according to Moore’s Law), software has become slower and heavier, a phenomenon known as Wirth’s Law. This means that the growing inefficiency of software is offsetting, if not outstripping, gains in hardware performance.
A striking example of this inefficiency is the contrast between the storage requirements of a computer that put men on the Moon (72 KB) and the requirements of a simple HTML e-mail today, which require more memory. Bloatware imposes continuous pressure to renew devices, contributing to the sector’s growing carbon footprint. In its 2021 digital barometer, ARCEP states that in more than a third of cases, we renew our smartphones for “software” reasons (the operating system can no longer be updated, the smartphone starts to lag…).
Bloatwares therefore have an indirect but significant environmental impact. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that developers are often not trained to optimize software resource usage. Bloatware is the result of a lack of awareness of good programming practices and eco-design, which could help reduce the environmental footprint of software by optimizing its efficiency and minimizing its need for material resources.
Given the impact of bloatware, the eco-design of digital services appears to be a necessary solution. However, it remains under-adopted, often due to a lack of awareness. Companies need to realize that eco-design is not just the responsibility of developers, but should be integrated right from the functional and technical design phases. Adopting this approach could not only reduce environmental impact, but also offer competitive advantages, strengthen business resilience in the face of dwindling resources, and comply with growing regulatory requirements.