From: Doug Huizenga [bounce@lcacenter.org] Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 8:21 AM To: lca@lcacenter.org Subject: Re: LCA Studies - Environmental Impacts of the Internet ### Resend of a message sent with the list in the CC line ### The mail-list e-mail address must be put in the "To:" line. ### Message sent by Yves Loerincik Dear Doug, > What is: > "The functional unit = Internet infrastructure during one year" > > The infrastructure to support 10,000 user's? The functional unit is the Internet infrastructure during one year for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. That represents about 5'000 students and 3'000 collaborators and PhD students. > How does the use of a laptop compare to that of a desktop? A laptop is used in the same way as a desktop. In other words, a laptop can replace a desktop, it's just a bit more expensive for the same caracteristics. Internet connection normally occur when people are in the office and are similar in term of duration as for a desktop. > You seem to have > pulled out the cpu usage into a different category - have you also done that > for the laptop and desktop usage? We used three categories: control unit, screens, laptop. The idea behind that is to be abel to quantify the impacts changes if one replace the CRT screens by flat screens and all desktop by laptops. > What about paper? I print a lot of pages that I would not print if my > computer was not attached to the internet. Paper has been taken into account. One defined a scenario to determine the number of pages printed. The question of paper is not that easy to answer. It is not evident that paper is part of the Internet infrastructure. It can also take place in the consequence of Internet use. It is a question of whether paper is a need for Internet or not? Best regards, Yves -- Yves Loerincik Group for Life Cycle Systems Laboratoire de Gestion des Ecosystèmes (GECOS) - ENAC Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne CH-1015 Lausanne EPFL Tel: +41-21-693 57 46 Fax: +41-21-693 57 60 http://gecos.epfl.ch/lcsystems/