"Cleantech" to Make the Earth a Planet That Everyone Can Be Proud Of

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocated by the United Nations for the realization of a sustainable society include multiple goals related to environmental conservation.

Since the start of the industrial revolution in the latter half of the 18th century, humankind has harvested the materials of the natural world on a massive scale, processed them into industrial products, and consumed them in large quantities. Subsequently, a large volume of waste products was also produced due to such production and consumption. As a result, things that do not belong were dispersed in places in nature where they should not be, which is causing the environment to be destroyed. In fact, desertification due to the logging of tropical rainforests, the destruction of marine ecosystems due to microplastics*1, as well as space junk which impedes future space development, and various other effects are becoming apparent.

*1 Microplastics are plastics that are broken down to a size that is invisible to the naked eye during the process in which discarded plastic products flow into the ocean. They continue to drift in the ocean for a long time and destroy the marine ecosystem when marine organisms take the microplastics into their bodies, and there are also concerns that they may pose a risk to the health of people who eat such marine organisms.

When it comes to conservation of the global environment, people are apt to focus on the decarbonization of energy. However, such destruction of the natural environment also requires immediate measures similar to decarbonization. Moreover, the movement to utilize the latest technologies to attempt to resolve environment-related issues has become increasingly active. Here, we select non-decarbonization initiatives from within the "cleantech" technology development movement aimed at environmental conservation to focus on and describe the measures that utilize ICT (information and communications technology) in particular.

Cleantech is a cluster of multidisciplinary technologies