The Climate Costs of Working From Home

When a global pandemic put a good part of the world on lockdown, there were notable improvements in air quality, thanks to a reduction in emissions with so many of us working from home. But Saleem Ali, founding director of the University of Delaware’s Minerals, Materials and Society (MMS) Program, suggests that the pandemic’s impact on our carbon footprints are more complicated.

Ali can discuss the impact of working from home and how it has increased demand for all the so-called “technology metals” needed for our computers and mobile phones, the cables making up the infrastructure of the internet and the server farms that provide internet storage and processing.

He can also talk about the critical importance of developing a global agreement on minerals.