The shifting face of sustainability

 

One of the most overlooked realities is that what counts as sustainable is never fixed. It changes with time, context, and technological progress.

 

  • Once, yellow incandescent bulbs were considered efficient — now they’re banned in many regions.

 

  • Paperless offices were hailed as the future — but digital archives now consume massive server energy.

 

  • Heavy in-house servers gave way to cloud virtualization, marketed as “green” — yet data centers have their own rising footprint.

 

This relativity matters. It shows that sustainability cannot be treated as a static label. A practice that once saved resources may later appear wasteful. The philosophy here is that true sustainability must be adaptive, constantly reassessing tools and practices against changing realities.

 

In other words, sustainability is not a single answer — it is a moving target.

When discussions about ICT efficiency mention sustainability, it is often reduced to a narrow understanding: lowering electricity bills, reducing e-waste, or optimizing servers and storage. These are valid concerns, but they don’t capture the full story. Sustainability in ICT is not about chasing a single technological fix such as solar panels or efficient bulbs. Instead, it is about how responsibly and intelligently we use the tools we already have. Efficiency, in this sense, is only shorthand for a deeper responsibility in the way technology is applied.

 

What makes this conversation more complex is the shifting meaning of sustainability over time. What was once considered efficient and forward-looking can quickly become obsolete. Yellow bulbs gave way to LEDs, paperless offices were celebrated but ended up creating new forms of digital waste, and in-house servers were replaced by cloud systems that bring their own hidden footprints. This shows that sustainability is not a permanent standard. It is adaptive, always contextual, and always in motion. A practice that saved resources yesterday can appear wasteful today.

 

There is also a global imbalance hidden in these debates. Much of the mainstream discussion around “green ICT” assumes stable access to electricity, which is not a reality everywhere. In many parts of the world, the issue is not optimizing server loads but simply keeping the lights on. And yet international policies and funding streams often promote costly, top-down solutions such as large solar projects or imported infrastructure, while overlooking the creative and local innovations that might truly empower communities. The risk is that sustainability becomes another form of inequality, where wealthy regions dictate standards while poorer ones are expected to adopt them without having the same foundation.

 

This perspective reveals that energy efficiency in offices, while useful, is only part of the picture. It may lower costs where infrastructure already exists, but it does little to address the deeper challenge of what ICT means in a world where electricity itself is unevenly distributed. In such contexts, the conversation about sustainability should not be limited to kilowatt-hours saved or bills reduced, but should expand toward the broader role of ICT in society.

 

The true value of ICT lies not in its consumption but in its capacity to create. It provides access to information that crosses borders and hierarchies, it enables collaboration across distances, and it fosters creativity in countless forms, from open-source projects to citizen journalism. This capacity to connect and to empower is not measured in energy audits but in the ways it enriches human knowledge and relationships. In that sense, ICT is not only a consumer of electricity but a medium of possibilities. Its sustainability should be evaluated by how it empowers minds rather than how much energy it saves on paper.

 

If sustainability is to mean anything in ICT, it must be understood as adaptive, not static. Technology will continue to change, and with it, the benchmarks of what is considered responsible or efficient will also shift. But the guiding principle should remain clear: technology must serve people before it serves policy, and it should empower education, creativity, and access rather than simply optimize infrastructure.

 

The conversation, then, is not just about electricity or equipment, but about the philosophy of how technology is used. Efforts to make ICT “green” will have limited meaning if they do not also build equity, empower local knowledge, and expand participation. In the long run, the most sustainable element of ICT may not be the machines themselves, but the capacity of people to use them to think, to discuss, and to innovate. That is where its real future lies.