Digital Pollution: Going Beyond The Limits Of Virtual

Abstract

Digital environment and digital pollution approach requires overcoming an alleged duality between the natural and virtual environments. The digital environment produces risks of impacts on the natural environment, it presents itself as a source of environmental pollution. Environmental protection should promote socialenvironmental measures in order to explicit the effects of degradation originated from digital environment and, thus, try to measure levels of pollution produced by digital data storage, electronic information generation, internet services and cumulative storage of data at electronic servers. It’s necessary to articulate and apply the principle of sustainability to information technology. On that purpose, the preparation and development of this article are based on Spinoza’s philosophical method combined with the critical propositional method in order to face the theme. In conclusion, the article supports that the digital environment is inseparably connected to the (natural and social) physical environment, understood as a specific object of environmental law.