The direct impacts of IT were studied by asking the interviewees how do green design, green manufacturing, green use and green disposal appear in their
smart tourism development projects. To achieve as comprehensive understand-ing as possible, some of the interviewees were also asked the followunderstand-ing ques-tions:
In purchasing decisions, do you take into account the environmental friendliness of the producer? Is the use of IT energy efficient?
Does your project strive to reuse or recycle technology? Is the disposal of technology handled with minimal environmental impact?
Most of the interviewees, 9 out of 10, said that in their project, green de-sign, manufacturing, use and disposal have not been taken into account. The reasons for it varied: interviewee 4 said that they trust that the existing process-es in the society take thprocess-ese things into account, and intervieweprocess-es 5 and 7 said that these aspects have not been discussed because there are other things than IT that have greater environmental impacts.
“Especially in my previous job, my tasks were more about the development of a software that had very little to do with any physical equipment, so there was very lit-tle interface with these subjects, these kinds of questions haven’t come up before.
Even now, we’re mostly experimenting, so this hasn’t come up. We are relying on the fact that society already has some processes in place for what is being done to an old device, and certain standards on how to act, so it has not in any way risen to a topic of discussion in my case.” – Interviewee 4
“In these solutions what we are currently rolling, I haven’t considered it to be very problematic for IT, that there are other things where the environmental problems may be more visible.” – Interviewee 5
“Our application exists in the virtual world, so I don’t feel that we have thought about this subject so actively or considered it to be very important. Maybe, I think that the energy consumption that goes into developing such an application is, how-ever, small in relation and if compared to the environmental impact of, for example, private motoring.” – Interviewee 7
Two of the interviewees, 9 and 7, answered that green design, manufactur-ing, use and disposal have not been taken into consideration, but when they were asked about their procurement decisions, some direct impacts could be found. Interviewee 9 suggested that sustainability might be a criterion for pro-curement in the future and interviewee 7 revealed that they have refurbished and reused information screens, but it emerged that it was due to synergistic interests and not for sustainability reasons.
“We haven’t acquired any new screens, these are existing screens of an existing ad-vertiser, which have been modified on one side to touch screens. We are thinking about this from the benefit perspective. In any case, this advertiser would have in-stalled these screens in the urban environment, so we have agreed that we can put these information screens in them. It broadens our information screen network in a way that reduces our need to acquire own equipment, or actually eliminates it
alto-gether. That is to say, there is a desire to seek such synergies, and we don’t have to invest in purchasing equipment.” – Interviewee 7
“We produce our own system, but if we make purchasing decisions from outside, we will try to favor local suppliers first and then the values of the company are consid-ered. We try to support sustainable development and environmentally friendly activ-ity, so they are one of the criteria.” – Interviewee 9
Two of the interviewees, 6 and 9, said that that green design, manufactur-ing, use and disposal have not been taken much into consideration and that they concentrate more on the enabling impacts that IT and their solutions might have.
“In my opinion, they haven’t really been taken into consideration. The focus is more on, maybe we’re thinking more about the actual service and its impact on the envi-ronment opposed to how it is produced and what is the impact from that.” – Inter-viewee 6
“With our service, we will exploit these already existing parking spaces, so for ex-ample, the city doesn’t have to start building new ones and use their resources on such things. And then, in the future, these shared cars, they will result in less private motoring, so through those things, I think that these appear in our project.” – Inter-viewee 9
Interviewee 1 introduced ways how direct impacts of IT are present in their project. Reusing and refurbishing are included in the green disposal of directs impacts of IT.
”They appear in project in a way, since we are not developing equipment but appli-cations and those information screens, which I’ve been working on recently. No new screens have been acquired, but we are utilizing existing ones. A few new Smart post parcel lockers have been acquired but these information screens come into existing advertising screens, transforming the current advertising surface into a touch surface on the other side. That is to say, in our project we don’t acquire new equipment or products for these services, but we reuse these old ones.” - Interviewee 1
The interviews revealed that in most of the interviewees’ projects the di-rect impacts of IT have not been taken into consideration. Two of the interview-ees stated that they refurbish and reuse old equipment, but one of them also stated that they reuse equipment because of synergistic interests and not for sustainability reasons. One also suggested that sustainability will be one of their procurement criteria in the future. The reasons for not taking the direct impacts into account varied. Some said that they are focusing on what their service can enable rather than what impacts the creation of the service causes. Some said that IT’s direct impacts have not been considered because there are other things that cause greater negative environmental impacts, such as private motoring.
One stated that they trust the existing processes of the society to tackle these issues. Altogether, it seems that the direct impacts of IT are not generally taken into account.