Environmental impact assessment for various information technology systems and classification by their environmental aspects

Environmental impact is assessed for various kinds of information technology (IT) systems. The life cycle assessment (LCA) concept was developed for IT systems to attain LCA for IT systems. The life cycle stages of IT systems were defined as design, construction, operation and disposal stages. Environmental load evaluation for Internet shopping systems showed that both an Internet bookstore and Internet software shop made the amount of carbon dioxide (CO) emission decrease. The reduction effect for the software shop was found to be larger than that for the bookstore. In classifying various kinds of IT systems according to their environmental aspects, the systems were classified into three categories: "dematerialization ", "waste avoidance" and "performance improvement". The classifications for 32 systems, including 19 systems we evaluated, were found to be related to the reduction rate of the CO/sub 2/ emission amount obtained when the systems were introduced. Dematerialization systems showed a particularly large effect on CO/sub 2/ emission reduction.