New vs Old Media: How Media Technology is More Wasteful Than Ever

Generations of iPods

New Media are the internet, streaming services, and computer technology.

Old Media are radio, television, and print.

Summary

Contemporary media technology is designed and marketed to appear immaterial. By immaterial, I mean that we are stepping away from the physicality of media objects. For instance, part of Apple’s brand is space and the atmosphere, which gives it an immaterial feeling. They have coined the term “iCloud”, making it the immaterial form of filing and bookkeeping. It is to depict that we now store data and information in the sky. Essentially, Apple attempts to remove itself from the Earth’s ground and all of the resources it has to offer. In doing so, consumers are led to believe that new media technology produces less waste. I will “debunk” this assumption and provide evidence as to how contemporary media is wasteful on Earth’s natural resources.

Connection

The first print media were cave paintings made with dirt or charcoal

As Jussi Parikka states in his book A Geology of Media, "nature affords and bears the weight of media culture, from metals and minerals to its waste load." Simply put, Earth's resources are the reason as to why we are able to communicate. Without them, society would be limited to the practice of orality, which is just speaking to one another. The first print media was made in the Pleistocene epoch by cavemen using whatever resources they could find or work with. We have advanced to the point now where we practically use all of Earth's resources to our advantage in creating media technology.

I have chosen to talk about new media and immateriality because it is marketed to appear as though we are furthering ourselves from the ground, and instead operating in the air or atmosphere. Yet, media technology will always derive from Earth's resources, and our products will stay material.

Planned Obsolescence

Media objects are designed to have a short life-span, and this is known as planned obsolescence. It is an economic concept, created in the 1950s during the Great Depression to help increase sales in media devices. Technological objects are designed as a “black box”, meaning the user sees and understands the input and output, but the mechanism itself is hidden. It is difficult to replace batteries, or even break open these objects. As a result, consumers are forced to replace their devices more often than they should need to. Consumers are forced into the cycle of disposing media and buying newer, updated versions. This involves wasting more of Earth's geological resources and producing more greenhouse gases.

Old Media: Vinyl Records, Cassettes, and CDs

Vinyl records, cassettes, and CDs are considered to be material music devices that were popular in the 1970s - 2000s. All three devices are composed of polymer, a substance that can either be natural (deriving from petroleum oil) or synthetic (made in a lab).

Vinyl Records

Sales of vinyl records peaked in 1973 and remained popular until 1988 when compact discs took over

The main geological resource used for vinyl records is polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a type of polymer. Polymer comes from petroleum oil that is extracted from the Earth using drilling machines. PVC is durable, which also makes it hard to dispose of. It is one of the most toxic polymers and has a carbon footprint emission of 67 kilograms of CO2.

Cassette Tapes

Cassette tapes are made of polyester plastic film and magnetic coating. Polyester is another type of polymer made by mixing ethylene glycol (petroleum) and terephthalic acid. This substance, like other non-biopolymers, is not biodegradable or sustainable. It takes approximately 450 years for plastic water bottles (which are made of the same polymer as cassettes) to decompose. Therefore, it is evident that cassettes also last hundreds of years, sitting in landfill and releasing toxic waste into the environment.

CDs

CDs are made of polycarbonate plastic substrate, acrylic plastic, and reflective aluminum. Polycarbonate is not as toxic as PVC, however, it is still a polymer and has similar affects to Earth as the other materials.

Environmental Impacts

PVC is harmful to the environment because it is made of the pollutants chlorine and dioxin. Chlorine is a CFC contributor for destroying the ozone layer and dioxin is used for herbicide production.

Extracting petroleum from reservoirs can also be dangerous and harmful in many ways. If it leaks out of a pipe and into the soil, the toxins can affect the minerals and any of the surrounding organisms. Petroleum could also leak into water systems and affect people and other organisms above ground. If extraction is done in the ocean, this can harm aquatic organisms and communities.

New Media: Streaming Music

Minerals used in a phone

Arsenopyrite: an iron arsenic sulphide used in radio frequency and power amplifiers. It is highly toxic if inhaled.

Display: silica, sand, cassiterite, bauxite, sphalerite

Battery: spodumene, graphite

Speakers and vibration: bastnaesite

Electronics and circuitry: chalcopyrite, tetrahedrite, silicon, arsenopyrite, tantalite, wolframite

Environmental Impacts

E-waste releases toxins into the environment

Media can be wasteful on Earth's resources throughout the lifecycle of producing, consuming, and disposing devices: "Media persists as electronic waste, toxic residue, and its own sort of fossil layer of disused gadgets and electronics”. Before a phone is made, its' carbon footprint has already started due to the mining of several minerals from every continent. In fact, most of a phone's emissions come from production and not actual usage. This is why it is important to keep your phone for as long as you can, rather than buying the latest updated version. While streaming music increases your carbon footprint, it is essentially the phone, or medium, itself that is the issue. The minerals and materials that compose a phone are the reason that streaming music can be more harmful than buying vinyl records.

A phone may not take as long to dispose as a vinyl record or cassette tape, but it is just as harmful to the environment. Technological devices can be recycled, yet only a small percentage are disposed of properly. The process of recycling involves breaking down a phone into separate minerals and smelting them. This only limits the amount of pollution, and still results in toxins being released into the atmosphere.

Mining Labour

Rare minerals are used in phones and can be extremely dangerous to collect them. Companies have child labourers mine cobalt which is used for iPhone batteries. This is an aspect that brands such as Apple do not want to show consumers. They market their products to be immaterial, so that they can disassociate themselves from the reality of an iPhone's production.

Consumption of Plastic vs Energy

Dr. Kyle Devine from University of Oslo conducted research on the environmental cost of records in the US music industry. He found that the consumption of plastic was 55 million kg in 1978 during the peak of cassette sales and 61 million kg in 2000 during the peak of CD sales. By 2016, the consumption of plastic declined in the music industry down to 8 million kg, as a result of music transitioning to streaming services. By solely considering the use of plastic, one may come to the conclusion that streaming music produces less waste. Yet, streaming music requires a new resource: energy.

Devine’s research included data for greenhouse gas emissions for both old and new media. The US’s music consumption in 1977 resulted in greenhouse gas emissions of 140 million kg, and in 2016 it had increased to roughly 200-350 million kg. We can no longer see the effects of consuming music, as it has transferred from a material resource (plastic) to an “immaterial” one (energy).

Besides energy consumption, more resources and materials are used to produce a phone compared to a vinyl record player, cassette, or CD. Resources from every continent are collected to create a single phone that, while has multiple uses, ultimately affects the Earth more. Roughly 14 minerals are used in a phone, while vinyl records are mainly composed of PVC.

The Internet

The internet is an immaterial library of information stored in the “iCloud” and in space. While this may be true, it is important for consumers to remember that computers and phones are mediums that afford us access to this "digital library". In actuality, many of Earth's geological resources are used to compose the internet.

Satellite Minerals

Most satellites are mainly composed of aluminum as it is lightweight, durable, and affordable. The top three producers of aluminum is Guinea, Australia, and Vietnam. Other materials used in satellites are graphite, boron, carbon, fiberglass, Teflon, and Kevlar.

Energy Consumption

We may not think that using the Internet is wasteful, as it is something we cannot see, but in reality, the internet has a large carbon footprint. It is estimated that by 2025, the IT industry could produce 5.5% of the world's carbon emissions.

Computer-generated image of objects currently in Earth's orbit

Space Debris

There are currently 2200 operational satellites in space, and about 34,000 pieces of debris 10 cm in diameter or larger, 900,000 objects 1-10 cm, and more than 128,000,000 pieces under 1 cm. In total, the mass of debris orbiting earth weighs 7 million kilograms. Some debris can re-enter the atmosphere and burn up, or decay on its own, but this process can take years.