It’s a good time to be a kiosk vendor. Demand continues to rise, and the overall value of the market is forecast to grow by close to 11% year-on-year to 2030. That will see millions of new kiosks purchased and installed over the next four years – great news for a business like ours.

But there is another side to the story we have to be mindful of. Every piece of tech hardware – smartphones and laptops, TVs and computer consoles, kiosks and other POS endpoints – carries around with it a certain amount of environmental baggage. There’s a cost to running all of these devices. And as we produce and use more of them, that cost goes up.

For one, more devices means more energy consumption. As long as we rely on burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, running more and more devices risks contributing to higher (or at least to not lowering) carbon emissions.

Then there’s the question of materials and waste. Kiosks typically have a shelf life of between five and 10 years. So while the number of kiosks in use is growing, millions of units are also being replaced every year. By 2030, the number of new kiosks that will need to be replaced in another half a decade or so will be higher again.

Manufacturing hardware comes with its own environmental baggage, from extracting and refining raw materials for components to the energy consumed by factories. Again, more units means more impact. But there’s also the issue of waste. So-called e-waste created by end-of-life hardware is a major issue globally. Still only a fraction of the millions of tons produced every year gets recycled, with the rest going to landfill. Many components in devices, from glass reinforced plastics to heat resistant plastics, are very difficult to recycle anyway.

The simple truth is, the more tech we produce, the more ends up in landfill. It’s not just a space issue. Electrical devices routinely contain substances that can be highly toxic when they leech into water systems in high concentrations, like the lead, mercury and arsenic used in electrical circuits.

It’s a many faceted challenge. We’re not going to turn back the clock and say, right, let’s all stop using digital devices because they consume too much energy and produce too much waste. We have to be able to respond to growing demand with awareness of the environmental implications and come up with sensible, realistic solutions.

Moving in the right direction

From our perspective, the kiosk industry has come a long way in making self-service hardware more sustainable. There’s plenty more to do. But the direction of travel is right. There’s been a huge push towards increasing energy efficiency and lowering consumption. The latest generations of direct view (non-LCD) LED and LED backlit touchscreens are much more energy efficient than their predecessors, while high-performance modern processors run ‘cooler’ (i.e. they consume less energy) while also providing more compute power. On top of these benefits, many kiosks now feature smart power management, putting units into standby mode when not in use.

Manufacturers are also looking at overall kiosk design through a sustainability lens. This includes making kiosks more durable to extend their operational life, thus lowering demand for new units and potential e-waste simultaneously. The industry is also moving towards more environmentally friendly materials and components, including increasing the use of recycled and recyclable materials. There are often conflicts to overcome in these different design criteria, however. For example, as mentioned, glass-reinforced plastic is difficult to recycle. But it’s popular in the manufacture of outdoor kiosks because it is so durable.

Another important development is the rise of modular unit designs. Instead of having a single fully integrated unit, modular design means building a kiosk out of multiple separate, easy-to-replace parts. That means if, say, a scanner or a touchscreen fails, you don’t have to throw out the whole thing. You can replace the faulty part and carry on, boosting longevity and reducing waste.

Demand for kiosks keeps on growing because they provide tangible benefits to businesses and their customers. But it is essential that we consider the environmental implications of that growth in a responsible way. If the success of kiosks is going to be sustainable long-term, then we have to take environmental sustainability seriously.