Guilty as charged

The first thing to know about applying environmentally friendly policies to the IT sector, and this probably applies to any industry, is that it’s not that straight forward and not that easy to measure. From product design, to manufacture, through the supply chain and in use until a product is eventually retired and hopefully reused and ultimately recycled, there are a huge number of impacts and potential impacts that process can have on the environment.

Some of course are easier to identify and measure and others offer direct business benefits, so it’s those that perhaps get the most attention. Really getting down to the nitty gritty of why a company is embarking on a Green strategy is equally difficult to detect. Is it really good corporate citizenship, an immediate cost imperative, a recognition that customers are becoming more demanding, or an acceptance that ultimately the government will mandate change so to avoid panic then the job needs to be started now?

One way to simplify the issue is to look at environmental impact in two ways. First there is the process of manufacturing, delivering and recycling a product. This is the category of producer responsibility. Then there is the use of the product through its lifecycle, how it is used, how much waste it creates and how much energy is it using. Most servers and communications and server equipment is on 24 hours a day. As a result, power usage is one of the most pressing factors in the industry’s efforts to reduce environmental impacts, happily it is also easy to measure and has a direct economic benefit.

Other areas are not so straight forward. The printer industry, for example, has long been seen as a great producer of waste and as a consequence has perhaps been the most proactive in change. Recycling of ink and toner cartridges has long been in place and now the printer industry is looking deeper to find more ways to help save the environment.