The carbon footprint of the top 10 laptops

Most office work now runs on a laptop, so its carbon footprint is worth knowing.

To calculate the carbon footprint of your laptop, you have to look at its entire life cycle.

Manufacturing accounts for most of it. Then there is the electricity the laptop uses over its life, which depends on its energy efficiency, and the data it sends and receives online.

Laptops tend to use between 50 and 100W/hour, which translates to carbon emissions of between 44kg and 88kg of CO2 per year for average daily usage.

(See table below for the carbon footprint of specific laptop models.)

Source: The Considerate Consumer

Where do a laptop's emissions come from?

There are two stages of carbon emission production when it comes to laptops. There are the emissions that come from producing the laptop and the CO2 emissions that come from the energy consumption of the laptop during its lifespan.

Production emissions

These come from the manufacture and shipping of a laptop. The majority of manufacturing emissions come from the materials used for the motherboard, display, and SSD, as well as the production techniques.

Factories, for example, are well-known for producing carbon emissions, and they're where the majority of laptops are built.

The components of a typical laptop also contain heavy or precious raw materials that need to be dug out of the ground, often using unsustainable methods.

Each laptop then has to be shipped to its buyer. The emissions caused by vehicles in the supply chain contribute to Scope 3 emissions, which are worse if the laptops are transported by air rather than land or sea.

Emissions from use

The average laptop lasts 4 years and has a daily usage time of around 8 hours. That's a lot of time spent plugged in and using the internet. While we imagine the 'cloud' as an abstract space that holds all our data, it very much exists as a physical space.

In fact, the large data centres which hold the cloud require a significant amount of energy to power up and cool down.

End-of-life emissions

A laptop thrown away with household rubbish does not decompose, and it can leak harmful materials in landfill. Recycle it through an electronics recycler or the original manufacturer instead.

How can you reduce a laptop's emissions?

Two things decide it: which laptop you buy, and how you use it day to day.

• Opt for one of the laptops which provides the least amount of carbon emissions across its lifespan.
• Choose renewable energy to power your home.
• Reuse a laptop in working condition that you already have before opting for a brand new one.
• Buy a laptop with a long life expectancy to avoid e-waste.
• Reduce the brightness of your laptop and turn off screensavers to reduce energy use.
• Only plug in your laptop when it's absolutely necessary, rather than leaving it plugged in all day.
• At your laptop's end-of-life, recycle it instead of throwing it in landfill.

Browsing has a footprint too, from the networks and data centres that serve each page. Here's how to cut the electricity your laptop uses while you browse. The same habits work on a smartphone.

• Watch video content sparingly.
• Connect to WiFi instead of 4G.
• Send fewer unnecessary emails. If every adult in the UK sent one less 'thank you' email a year, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon per annum.

Unfortunately, there's not yet a carbon-neutral laptop, and there are few ways to work at a desk job without access to some sort of laptop or desktop.

For a business buying laptops at scale, the figure that matters is the footprint the manufacturer publishes for each model. DitchCarbon holds published product carbon footprints and matches them to the lines in your purchase data where that model is bought.