In a recent article titled "Is Green IT Your Emporor With No Clothes", Forrester associate Doug Washburn posits that "technology is not green and never will be." Washburn adds that although the technology itself is not green, enterprises have much to gain from greening initiatives including financial and environmental performance improvments.
GreenITTools.com is seeking IT and sustainability professionals to provide input into the next version of the Green IT Guide and the Green IT Guide and Toolkit! We believe the best knowledge comes from the community of practise and we would like to have your input on how to make our Green IT products better! Let us know what to add, subtract, enhance, or revamp and receive a free copy of the new version!
Green IT Tools.com and Strategic Sustainability Consulting are pleased to announced an an interactive webinar focusing on the practical steps to assess your organization's IT impact and create a strategy to "Green Your IT". The webinar will take place on September 11, 2008 at 1pm EST (10am PST).
Register on-line through Strategic Sustainability Consulting.
Webinar Description
On July 15, 2008, IDC, an IT research organization, release the criteria and the first 5 organizations to be certified under their new asset recovery certification program. Dell, HP, IBM, Intechra and Redemtech were the first U.S. companies to receive the seal of approval under the guidelines IDC has developed.
Have you ever wondered what goes into the development of the ENERGY STAR specifications and when the specifications change? We did, so we did some research and here's what we found.
Research organizations have been closely monitoring the development and adoption of "green IT" in organizations. Based on the reports this year, reports suggests that the focus on sustainability and environmental initiatives in IT will continue.
Xerox has released an interesting new calculator to assist customers with calculating possible improvements by optimizing an organization's printing solutions. Xerox sales representatives are armed with a powerful calculator to assist clients but they have also posted a paired down version on their website for anyone to use.
A new article titled "Green carrots needed for IT chiefs" by Tim Ferguson on silicon.com has raised the issue of IT department's not being fiscally responsible for the energy consumption of their equipment. We often come across the complaint from facility managers that IT managers are not motivated to implement energy saving programs because it does not affect their budget positively (generally there is a cost and the benefits are gained by another department). The article points to a survey completed by Quocirca that found "less than one in five IT decision maker
Green IT initiatives for the IT department can be organized into four major categories; policies and performance reporting, energy consumption, strategic asset management and green business support. Each of these is discussed below with examples.
Small businesses have a somewhat different business case for sustainability initiatives in general and green IT is no exception. Small businesses have a unique set of challenges and opportunities that can actually make the transition to sustainability much quicker.
For smaller businesses there are two special considerations when looking at sustainability initiatives; cash flow and flexibility.
While it sounds like common sense to recycle hardware, what is not commonly known is that some recyclers do not actually recycle the materials, and a significant amount of waste is shipped to countries like India and China where components can be extracted at a lower cost. Environmental laws in these countries, although relatively strict, are often not enforced in rural areas where this processing often occurs.
Responsible purchasing policies are an excellent way for organizations to begin their Green IT efforts. For example a company practising responsible purchasing policies set out a comprehensive set of measures that include criteria for purchasing decisions other than price such as whether or not the equipment meets emerging voluntary environmental standards and Energy Star ratings, the manufacturer’s performance in social responsibility, and waste and disposal services provided. The EPEAT standard (as described previously) provides an important foundation for responsible pu
The field of sustainability is new to business in general and even newer for IT departments. Best practises and standards are still in the earliest stages of development. Some emerging standards and initiatives are described below. We anticipate there will be many more developments in the next 6 months.
There is no doubt that IT is a contributor to both the problem and the solution of making our organizations sustainable. Recently Greenpeace studied the environmental impacts of the processes used to manufacture printed wiring boards (PWBs), semiconductor chips and assembly of computer systems1. The evidence of environmental contamination by a diverse range of chemicals in the local water and food sources near the manufacturing plants was astounding. As a result the IT industry has now become one of the major focuses for reducing our environmental im
The terms “Green IT” and “Lean IT” and “Sustainable IT” are used prolifically these days and often inter-changeably. The three areas are the focus of exciting innovation the IT industry these days are significantly impacting IT operations departments both large and small and are described below. Lean IT focuses on reducing hardware, green IT builds on lean IT to reduce consumption and sustainable IT builds on green IT to reduce impact on economy, society and the environment.
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