Can IT in the workplace be green?
What could possibly be worse than all those airplanes spewing noxious fuel exhaust into the air?
The global IT infrastructure of course.
Bet you did not know that while airlines are said to produce 2% of the worlds greenhouse gases annually, IT equipment is said to produce up to 4%. This is not something we typically think about, but all those computers, printers, phones, etc. powered around the clock are costing our planet big time when it comes to the atmosphere.
And it is not just the energy wasted. There are literally hundreds of millions of computers in the United States alone. Add to that office phones, printers, PDAs, Laptops and you being to get an enormous selection of equipment. Most of these will only see a few years of service before they are replaced by something newer, faster smaller.
What happens to the old stuff? Well a good portion of it ends up in the local landfill instead of being recycled into new equipment. While we have certainly improved in the last 10 years there is a long way to go.
The printer is one of the worst offenders in this group but now how you might think. The ink cartridges that are used in office printers are recyclable as well. In fact, they can be refilled over and over again. These recyclable products often see their way to the trash can only to end their journey in a land fill near you.
Small changes can certainly make a difference. Encourage staff or co-workers to turn off lights when not in use. Encourage others to turn off their computers at night or when they are not in use. IT departments should enable power saving settings on all non-critical devices in order to save energy that is not directly used. This includes setting monitors to turn themselves off after a short duration of inactivity. Ironically, screen savers are not the answer to this problem since they often consume as much or more power than typical use.
Businesses seem to be responding to this problem. More often you can find advertisements for business that are very concerned about the power they consume with some notable large companies getting into the game. If these large companies can make the change then smaller companies (who are often more nimble) can certainly make these small changes to their operations.
