Technical Programme Committee member - Special Track on “Avoiding an Internet of Trash” at ACM GoodIT’24

The 4th ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT 2024) is a premier international forum for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends and concerns, as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the fields of data and technology for addressing Social Good and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Within the context of the conference, we are organizing a special track “Avoiding an Internet of Trash”, focused on a sustainable Internet of Things. We are witnessing an ever-increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with predictions of between 50 and 125 billion IoT devices by 2030. There is currently no information about how long these devices will be used. If one goes by the lifetime of smartphones or laptops, this could be in the order of 4 - 6 years. Without any action, this situation could produce a large amount of electronic waste. Many factors contribute to this situation, including issues of planned obsolescence of devices, software maintenance, volatile businesses, poor battery capacity, and unnecessary gadgets. This challenge is further compounded by the fact that there is often limited interoperability between devices and little reuse and limited recycling of unused IoT devices.