Useless? I really doubt you can justify any lifestyle product as being "practically useless". If it is really useless, then there is no reason why anyone would be spending thousands of dollars on them. The electrical usage by those products are often quite negligible as compared to Bitcoin. There is a problem with Bitcoiners; they seem to draw irrelevant examples to justify the huge and frivolous usage of electricity on Bitcoin mining. Common examples includes: Carbon footprint on consumer products, electrical usage by banks, Carbon footprint on transport. Unfortunately, the utility provided by those products far outweigh those using Bitcoin.

The transaction volume and the practical usage of Bitcoin is fairly small, far smaller than your competing payment processors. In this regard, then your marginal utility is already smaller than major payment processors and they are obliged to put an effort into environmental conservation as well. Let's face it, Bitcoin has a great concept behind it but you can't justify the current electrical usage because the adoption of Bitcoin is so low!

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It's green washing. Miners feel that they have to explicitly state that they are using renewable or green energy because the media focuses on that too much. However, this isn't a one dimensional issue. What is the opportunity costs of something like this; are people in those regions more reliant on fossil fuels because Bitcoin miners are taking a large proportion of the "green" energy? What is the percentage of the energy being produced being truly "green"? Are they carbon neutral and do they have zero environmental impact? How much E-waste arises from Bitcoin mining alone?