2025/01/01 by Perseverance Munga Ngoy, Farooq Dar, Mohan Liyanage +7 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Engineering · #Green IT and Sustainability
paper · doi:10.1109/mprv.2025.3541558
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
AI, data science, and other computing domains are fueling an unprecedented increase in the demand for computing power. Satisfying this demand, however, brings significant environmental challenges as computing is energy-intensive and devices improve rapidly making older devices obsolete and resulting in a significant accumulation of e-waste. We contribute by examining the potential of repurposing smartphones classified as e-waste as small-scale data centers with the aim of extending the life-cycle of these devices, thus reducing e-waste accumulation and contributing toward more sustainable computing practices. We demonstrate how hardware features can be bypassed to enable reprogrammability at a cost of approximately 8€ . We use our prototype to implement a custom sensor data collection and analysis solution. We also showcase possible applications, highlighting the range of scenarios where repurposing can be useful, as well as identifying challenges and potential future avenues for research. These include development of better tools to facilitate the repurposing process and development of tools that are agnostic of the underlying hardware characteristics.