As technology’s toll on the environment soars, people from all walks of life are working together to build something better
When sitting around a table with your friends, is the difference between Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and AI-generated images of sailboats an immediate topic of conversation? How about music made from placing electrodes on potato skin?
At the Permacomputing Club, these conversations sit alongside serious planning, all geared towards what supporters describe as “an anti-capitalist project that challenges the environmental and social damage caused by modern technology”. Around 25 London-based members routinely meet in person in Peckham, London – a deliberately analogue act in an increasingly digital world that is part of a much bigger story.
“Permacomputing is really focused on repair and thinking about the physical materiality of the computer,” says Ana Meisel, who founded the club’s London branch last April. “In the same way that waste is a key strategy for permaculture, where compost is this circular thing where basically no waste is made, permacomputing uses that same analogy.”
The explosion of AI use over the past two years has dramatically increased the energy demands of the digital sector, which encompasses everything from personal devices to data centres. According to the Institution of Environmental Sciences, the sector accounted for around 4.75 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions in the UK in 2024. While that figure may seem modest compared with transport (31 per cent) or agriculture (13 per cent), it does not capture the speed at which demand is growing, or the fact that much of it is unnecessary: a ChatGPT query, for example, uses up to 90 times more energy than a Google search.
In the hope of finding a sustainable alternative, Professor Tony Kenyon has presented evidence to MPs advocating for neuromorphic computing, which models technology on the human brain. The University College London researcher explains that while the brain consumes around 20 watts, a digital computer of roughly the same size uses about seven megawatts. That is 350,000 times more power, a gap he says must be closed.
Despite such progress, he worries demand will outrun solutions. UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged that “Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers”, but Kenyon is urging caution. “The UK’s computing demands are doubling every three and a half months,” he says, adding that the country’s energy infrastructure cannot withstand such sharp rises in growth. When Ireland announced a moratorium on new data centres in December 2025 because it was running out of power, Kenyon saw it as proof that the UK needs a realistic plan quickly.
Many at the Permacomputing Club are motivated by similar concerns. Co-leader Margot McEwen worries that modern technology has become so streamlined that users are never pushed to seek out alternatives, instead concentrating power in large tech firms and removing autonomy over environmental impact. “That can put you in a position where you’re just a consumer of this stuff and you have no idea how to make something of your own,” the filmmaker says.
“That can put you in a position where you’re just a consumer of this stuff and you have no idea how to make something of your own”
Those worries extend beyond the club. Annike Tan, known online as Ube Boobey, went viral earlier this year for showing off her cyberdeck, a working computer she built inside a shimmery clamshell clutch. Tan sees her hobby as a form of activism: “Politics is tied into everything we do and consume and make – being conscious about the environment, feminism, accessibility, anti-capitalism.”
Her cyberdeck can run entirely off-grid, offering user control and sustainability. “The really cool thing about cyberdecks is because you can take it apart and rebuild it, you can upgrade it when you want,” she explains.
Tan’s approach pushes against planned obsolescence, a strategy designed to increase consumption. “You buy a smart washing machine, and three or four years later the software is no longer supported by the manufacturer. Now you have to get rid of it,” Kenyon says. Where some technology is designed to expire, cyberdecks are designed to adapt.
Planned obsolescence poses a real threat to both communities. “I’ve got computers that are 45 years old,” McEwen says. “I just can’t picture the stuff that’s getting made today lasting as long.” These tensions explain why communities such as these are growing in size: tech specialists, hobbyists and tag-along friends, all united by an ambition to reduce the environmental and socio-economic cost of their digital lives.
Feature Image Credit: Claire Ducharme
