Information and Communications Technology (ICT) does itself produce certain environmental impacts due to, for example, consumption of electrical power to operate equipment and systems. On the other hand, ICT usage can contribute to a reduction in environmental impact due to a marked improvement in the efficiency of production, consumption and business, also that of traffic alternatives and a reduction in traffic volume. This is because ICT is considered to be the first technology that has been able to increase benefits while decreasing proportional consumption of resources and energy. ICT exploitation can readily contribute to solving global environmental issues. This paper reviews the concept of ‘Green ICT’ from the perspective that it is able to reduce the environmental impacts of a society by reducing the impact of ICT installations in telecommunication centers, datacenters, and customer offices and homes (Green of ICT). At the same time, it can also reduce the impact of a society as a whole, by providing various kinds of ICT services (Green by ICT).

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This paper presents the concepts of moral hazards and adverse selection in the reusable goods market on the Internet. In the case of asymmetric information, for example, one party might have more information on the goods in a particular transaction than the other party. The moral hazard situation happens when the party with more information about the transaction has some incentive to behave inappropriately, from the perspective of the party with less information. This can be observed on the Internet as well. Adverse selection has been explained very well in Akerlof′s article, The Market for Lemons, where he concludes that owners of good cars will opt out of putting their cars on the used car market. This is because buyers do not get information on the quality of the cars. Buyers then, tend to estimate the quality as average so only lower quality cars can be sold there. In the paper, we show reputation systems that aim to avoid the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection, and also touch upon issues such as “faked” rates and evaluations within reputation systems. Finally, we briefly introduce our study on designing an auction mechanism under asymmetric information on the quality of goods among experts and amateurs.

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The ICT system of the advanced material recycling uses among others, the IC tag system, and is contained in the practical use stage. In South Korea, the resource recovery system using the IC tag system has been introduced for 400000 households. In China, large-scale material recycling using the bar code system has been advanced. In Japan, nation-wide structure for a material recycling system for construction waste, which uses IC tag, has been constructed a new and management costs are beginning to be reduced.
A city-oriented material recycling system has, however, many issues and there are also structural problems involved. This report provides an the outline of a material recycling system that is managed by a demand-side driven system of cooperation.

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Development of ICT (Information and Telecommunications Technology) is diversifying communication tools. In response to this trend, it is now necessary to review the waste generation situation and the 3Rs of new and old telecommunications equipment and installations. This paper shows outlines of telephone and Internet systems, along with their development. The paper also reports on situations dealing with waste generation and the 3Rs on telephone installations, public telephones, landline telephones and facsimiles, as well as mobile phones, personal computers and data circuit terminating equipment.

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Measuring the true impacts of ICTs, as tools for sustainable development and a means for realizing a low environmental impact society, is a difficult task that is being vigorously debated both at the practitioner and academic levels. However, no one doubts the potential for ICTs to leap-frog social, economic, and political development.
For the realization of a sustainable and low environmental impact society, ICTs are exerting both positive (increase in efficiency, reduction of resource usage, reduction of green-house gas emissions, etc.) and negative (growth of E-waste, growth of electricity usage, etc.) impacts. The complexity of this relationship between ICTs and the environment is even more greatly compounded with the advent of social media and mobile devices, which are transforming traditional geography-bound societies by democratizing information creation, distribution, and exchange. These transformations are having a great impact on human activities and the environment.
This paper examines the impacts of ICT usage on the environment using global examples and also explores the possibilities and challenges of using ICTs as tools for low-environmental impact (sustainable) development.

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