According to a new study conducted by researchers working at the Digital Power Group, refrigerators are much more environmentally friendly than iPhones.
So, it seems that, over the course of a year, an average refrigerator burns less energy than an iPhone.
According to the Daily Mail, the annual energy consumption of a refrigerator reaches 322 kilowatt-hours, while an iPhone exceeds 361 kilowatt-hours on an annual basis.
Oddly enough, this difference is not due to the fact that the iPhone has to be charged very often.
The large consumption of the iPhone is due to the fact that its owners use it to connect to the Internet and thus there is a large data flow. Consequently, the data centers that create wireless connections with continuously flowing data are responsible for energy waste.
“Despite the fact that charging a smartphone requires a negligible amount of electrical energy, using it to watch just one hour of video each week, you consume annually more electrical energy than two new refrigerators need in a year.”
In their report, the researchers claim that soon hourly traffic on the Internet will exceed the annual Internet traffic recorded in 2000.
Furthermore, it appears that today about 1,500 terawatt-hours are used by communication systems worldwide on an annual basis. This number is equal to the energy used globally in 1985.
