You might assume that smartphones are good news for the environment, reducing people's reliance on paper and helping to cut transport emissions.
But using your smartphone for just an hour per day produces more carbon dioxide in a year than two return flights from London to Glasgow, according to new research.
The research by UK-based manufacturer Viessmann reveals the amount of CO2 produced by everyday tasks and items.
For example, boiling a kettle produces 70g of CO2, driving a mile in an average car produces 710g, and spending a night in a hotel with entertainment produces 25kg.
However, one of the most surprising statistics to arise from the research is that an hour of smartphone use every day for a year creates 1.25 TONNES of CO2.
That's more that two return flights from London to Glasgow, which Viessmann calculates as producing 500kg of CO2 each.
CO2 emissions are generated by servers and data centres when a smartphone is used to access everything from apps and search engines to maps and text messages.
95% of households in the UK own a mobile phone, with the Office Of National Statistics reporting that there are 18.9 million families in the United Kingdom.
So if every household were to use a smartphone for just one hour per day, this would create 23.6 million tonnes of CO2 over the course of a year.
That's almost 3% of the UK's total carbon emissions per year – which is 826 million tonnes according to Viessmann's research.
"People are beginning to open their eyes and see that if we continue to live the way we are our planet won’t be able to cope," a spokesperson for Viessmann said.
This is not the first time the carbon footprint of the Information and Communications (ICT) Industry – which includes computers and phones but also infrastructure like data centres – has been highlighted.
Last year, researchers at McMaster University in Canada reported that greenhouse gases emitted by the ICT Industry could grow from about 1% of global emissions in 2007 to over 14% in 2040.
That's more than half the current carbon footprint of the entire global transportation sector.
Smartphones were found to be among the worst offenders, with the carbon footprint of these devices expected to exceed that of desktop computers, laptops, and displays by 2020.
As well as the energy it takes to charge smartphones and run telecom infrastructure, this is also down to the energy cost of manufacturing the electronics and mining the metals that go into these devices.
Of course, most people replace their smartphones every couple of years, and less than 1% get recycled, meaning the rest go to landfill – increasing their carbon footprint even more.
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