Sustainability of Computing Systems: A Survey from Environmental Impact Perspectives

Modern computing supports scientific discovery and daily life, but its rapid growth increases environmental burdens across the full system life cycle. Prior work on sustainable computing remains fragmented and lacks an complete perspective. This survey reviews over 300 studies on the environmental impacts of computing systems, from manufacturing, operation, and end-of-life. We introduce a unified taxonomy to organize prior work by impact types, environmental pressures, study methods, models, and mitigation approaches. Using this taxonomy, the survey summarizes progress and gaps in global warming, freshwater use, and biodiversity loss, revealing key tradeoffs and future research opportunities.