Today there is a wealth of data available detailing the climate impact of our actions, including the CO2 emissions from academic flying. Despite this, such data is hard to engage with in the abstract, leading to little practical action. In this paper, we investigate how to support processes of collectively working through and making sense of environmental data about academic flying through data physicalisation. Drawing on the results from a series of workshops with stakeholders at our own university, in which we have designed and deployed a data physicalisation of flight data, we describe this process and discuss lessons learned with a focus on material, engagement with data and ethics.

Behavioural change is necessary in order to reach a sustainable society. Sometimes this will translate into doing less and it is likely that we need to stop some things entirely. We lay out the multiple challenges of making the act of abstaining count. The issue is partly philosophical - we ask ourselves how to intellectually and semantically frame abstaining; partly practical – how can we count abstaining? It concerns a broader understanding of modernity and interrogates the ideas of progress and growth, technological change, and innovation. Abstaining will also be a moving target as expectations and demands shift over time.

The environmental impact of computing is significant, distributed, and extensive. In this paper, we examine the extent to which this implies that computing, as an industry and as specific technologies, infrastructures, and practices, can be considered as ecocide. Ecocide is a proposed crime of environmental damage. A significant movement is underway to register ecocide as the fifth law of the International Criminal Court. We examine the definition of ecocide proposed and evaluate computing across the criteria established. Our intention with this paper is not to provide definitive proof, one way or the other, but to raise the question of the extent to which we can consider, be accountable for, and take responsibility for the environmental harm we create as designers of computing technologies. We argue that the establishment of ecocide as an international crime will have significant effects for computing in how we assume and consume natural resources in the advancement of computing, and that a paradigm shift is needed to recognise and account for nature as an equal participant in computing’s future and development.

Surveys of urban history from ancient times to the present reveal a continuum of collective responses to pandemics ranging from quarantine facilities and monitoring the spread of disease to building new wastewater networks. The contemporary COVID-19 pandemic includes new digital tools and techniques that supplement (and sometimes replace) the existing analogue responses, while raising new ethical issues with respect to privacy. A typology of pandemic responses in cities is created, based on human–building interaction (HBI) principles. This typology can be used to compare and contrast analogue and digital responses relating to distancing, monitoring and sanitising. It provides a summary of a wide range of individual and collective implications of pandemics and demonstrates the indelible connections between pandemics and the built environment. In addition, the typology provides a tool to interpret some of the opportunities and drawbacks of digitalising cities. PRACTICE RELEVANCE The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the enduring co-evolution of cities and disease through history. This study aims to inform future pandemic preparedness by providing a framework for designers, managers and users of public spaces to evaluate the multiple implications of emerging technologies that are integrated within the urban fabric. While the rapid rise of digitalisation to advance urban health agendas continues to raise new questions relating to individual and civic freedoms, HBI qualitatively provides a lens through which to examine the overlapping spatial, ethical, and temporal consequences for humans and the built environment. Urban planning researchers and designers can use HBI principles to humanise the sustainable smart city.

ICT4S as an umbrella concept encompasses several disciplines and areas related to sustainability and ICT, and it can be difficult for an educator to have an overview of all areas and research fronts where interesting, engaging and transformative research is taking place. We provide such a space.

This paper describes an ideation workshop aiming to explore the intersection of sonic interactions and energy use. As part of a larger research project exploring the role that sound can play in efficient energy behaviours, the workshop encouraged users to look for overlaps between their home resource use, potential sonic feedback and the feelings and emotions elicited by both. The workshop design was successful in providing non-experts with space and tools to reflect on the complex relationship between household, sound, energy and our feelings towards them. On a more practical level, 15 “hotspots” were identified where sound and energy concerns could be potentially addressed with sonic interventions, and four speculative prototypes were developed during the workshop each one revealing original considerations and relationships between sound and energy to be developed further in future work.

The widespread awareness and the sense of urgency and helplessness regarding the ongoing sustainability crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss etc.) can evoke feelings of grief, sorrow, despair and anxiety. Those emotions are seldom discussed in computing or in computing education. They can have detrimental effects on the well-being of students and others, and also lead to inaction. But concern can on the other hand also be a catalyst for learning. In this paper, we present results and reflections from a research and development project in our introductory course to sustainability and ICT focusing on emotions in sustainability education. We focus on “eco-anxiety” and ask: 1) How is eco-anxiety communicated by students and teachers?, 2) In what ways do students receive support to deal with eco-anxiety? and 3) What could be done to better address eco-anxiety in computing education? We here present an analysis of how we have responded to the phenomenon of eco-anxiety, what activities have been added to the course and an evaluation of these interventions. The results are based on joint reflections that have been guided by literature, a small-scale ethnographic study as well as a course evaluation. The paper will end with recommendations for other ICT4S educators on how they can start addressing eco-anxiety in their education.

Understanding how scholars reason about their own flying habits is important when dealing with the problems of large emissions from academic air travel. This study is based on a travel habits survey with scholars at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. KTH has relatively high emissions from air travel, but at the same time, it has a high profile in matters of sustainability and a lot of research related to this theme. One can therefore assume a high degree of knowledge about the climate crisis and the climate impact of various actions. It is also plausible that KTH scholars meet special expectations to be role models and that practices in conflict with their teaching can have consequences for the public confidence in the university. In this study, we look at how scholars reason about how emissions from their flying could be reduced. Their responses display a spectrum of varying attitudes, from climate scepticism to a commitment to radical transformation, with the majority in between, either suggesting different types of concrete changes or invoking arguments to justify the status quo. The proposed interventions, several of which are ingenious and wise, can guide university managements to strategies that have support from employees. The more reluctant arguments point to cultural and discursive habits that must be understood and met in an empathetic way. 

Carbon calculators have been put forth as a tool to motivate sustainable behaviour change in people. However, the approach of “just” presenting numbers to communicate climate footprints has not been found to be an effective strategy. In this paper, we investigate the use of an application that combines carbon footprint calculations with gamelike features in order to address the gap between awareness and behaviour. Our results are based on an interview study and show that while respondents appreciate the idea, there are several problem areas which have implications for the design of carbon calculators, including issues with targeting the “right users”, the use of gamification and the absence of a social context. Furthermore, the results point towards general barriers and opportunities for design when the aim is to design for sustainable behaviour change. This includes a need to be adaptive to the transitioning process towards a low carbon lifestyle.  

Circularity in how we handle resources and materials is a key ambition in many sustainability initiatives and policies. Yet, when it comes to the circularity of ICT, much research tends to focus on how raw materials are sourced and later recycled. E-waste has represented the fastest growing waste stream globally for years, and the vast majority is not handled appropriately. In a society where repair is possible, accessible and the normative response to the breakage of devices, this waste stream could be dramatically reduced. In this paper, we describe and discuss the results of a literature review of how repair of ICT has been approached in the proceedings of previous ICT4S conferences (2013–2020). The findings are then analysed in relation to a set of speculative future Repair Society scenarios, which were developed to inform policy recommendations. The paper contributes to the ICT4S community by: 1) identifying aspects of ICT repair that have been studied to date; 2) using the Repair Society scenarios to generate insights and reflect on gaps in the research; and 3) outlining insights and suggestions of areas that could fruitfully be explored by the ICT4S community in future research.