A dhobi, or a washerman washes cloths on the banks of the River Gomti in Lucknow, India, Saturday, September 12, 2020. Dhobis are traditional laundry workers who wash clothes by hand and dry them in the sun, an occupation which has been in existence for generations. Most cities in India have a Dhobi Ghat, or washermen's area, where the city's pile of clothes is laundered. This practice is still popular in India, despite of modern technology. Around 1,000 families work in Lucknow's Dhobi Ghat. However, in light of the novel coronavirus, their wages have decreased drastically. With each family earning around US$100-200 per month. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

Electric cars sit charging in a parking garage at the University of California, Irvine January 26, 2015. “The Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration”, a $79 million project funded half by federal stimulus money and half by Edison and partners like UC Irvine, was launched in 2010. The $12 billion utility's research team Southern California Edison is testing everything from charging electronic vehicles via cell phone to devices that smooth out the power created by rooftop solar panels. Those are some of the roughly 60 projects in the works at Edison's Advanced Technology division. It has a small $19 million annual budget, but its influence far exceeds that. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Eurocopter's X³ high-speed hybrid helicopter demonstrator performs, September 6, 2010. The Eurocopter X³ (X-Cubed) is an experimental high-speed compound helicopter developed by Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters). A technology demonstration platform for Eurocopter “high-speed, long-range hybrid helicopter” or H³ concept, the X³ achieved 255 knots in level flight on 7 June 2013, setting an unofficial speed record for a helicopter. (Photo by Reuters/HO/Eurocopter/Penna)

Rooftops of solar powered houses are pictured in Ota, 80 km northwest of Tokyo in this October 28, 2008 file photo. One by one, Japan is turning off the lights at the giant oil-fired power plants that propelled it to the ranks of the world's top industrialised nations. With nuclear power in the doldrums after the Fukushima disaster, it's solar energy that is becoming the alternative. Solar power is set to become profitable in Japan as early as this quarter, according to the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF), freeing it from the need for government subsidies and making it the last of the G7 economies where the technology has become economically viable. (Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)

President Barack Obama watches as Joey Hudy (L), 14, from Phoenix, Arizona pumps the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon he invented, while touring student science fair projects on exhibit in the State Dining Room at the White House February 7, 2012 in Washington, DC. Obama hosted the second White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. (Photo by Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images)

Sustainable development goal target 12.5 is to reduce waste. But with a planet increasingly dependent on technology, is that even possible? As of today, over 30m tonnes of electronic waste has been thrown out so far this year, according to the World Counts. Most e-waste is sent to landfills in Asia and Africa where it is recycled by hand, exposing the people who do it to environmental hazards. Kai Loeffelbein’s photographs of e-waste recycling in Guiyu, southern China show what happens to discarded computers. (Photo by Kai Loeffelbein/laif Agentur)

This February 7, 2018, photo shows João Lousada, a flight controller for the International Space Station, wearing an experimental space suit during a simulation of a future Mars mission in the Dhofar desert of southern Oman. The desolate desert in southern Oman resembles Mars so much that more than 200 scientists from 25 nations organized by the Austrian Space Forum are using it for the next four weeks to field-test technology for a manned mission to Mars. (Photo by Sam McNeil/AP Photo)

A humanoid robot named Kansei, meaning “sensibility” in Japanese, makes a facial expression depicting “happiness”, next to the word “Love” during a demonstration at a laboratory of Meiji University's Robot and Science Institute in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo in this June 4, 2007 file photo. Three-fourths of robot installations over the next decade are expected to be concentrated in four areas: transportation equipment, including the automotive sector; computer and electronic products; electrical equipment and machinery. Labor costs have climbed in countries such as China that have been popular for outsourcing production, while technological advances for robots allow them to be more flexible and perform more tasks. (Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)