Introduction

In today’s global business and trade environment, the explosive growth of the Internet, digital computing and global IT infrastructures leads a growing electronic waste problem throughout the world.
Over 850 million PCs are turned on every day. And they consume an immense amount of electricity. Most of it is provided by burning fossil fuels. This process emits pollutants, sulfur, and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These emissions cause respiratory disease, smog, acid rain, and global climate change.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that in 2005, discarded electronics amounted to 1.9 to 2.2 million tons in the United States -- and the overwhelming majority ended up in landfills. Globally, the volume of electronics discarded has ballooned recently, with the environmental group Greenpeace estimating it amounts to 20 to 50 million tons generated each year.
From the largest scale—the earth—to the smallest scale of a classroom or an office, the environmental impact of today’s PC architecture is a tremendous growing problem. Unfortunately, the impact is largely unaddressed and often unrecognized. In these times of high energy costs and climate change (global warming), enterprises, governments, and society at large have the social responsibility to tackle environmental issues and adopting environmentally sound practices through greening the IT products, applications, services, and practices.

Reference:

Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their impacts by Ruediger Kuehr and Eric Williams

"The state of green IT adoption". Forrester Consulting. September, 2008 

"Time to deal with e-Waste in the December", 9, 2007 edition of The New York Times.