Reducing your organisation’s carbon footprint might be easier than you think – and there can be serious business benefits, too, says Heidi-Lynn Mitchell
An awareness of our impact on the environment now permeates every part of our lives. This has become as important for businesses as it is for individuals. For while both share a concern for the future of our planet, businesses can also see other, direct benefits, not least to the balance sheet. And they are aware of the need to be seen to be following best practice.
An environmentally friendly image is especially important for consumer-oriented businesses or those with a high public profile. But this will have increasing significance for all organisations as various forms of legislation, regulation and taxation are introduced.
From an IT perspective, the strategy for reducing your environmental impact has two main aspects – your choice of the technology you deploy, and how you use it.
Technology choice
There are major changes one can make at the infrastructure level. The chief focus here is the datacentre. Many companies are re-examining their datacentres with a view to increasing efficiency and agility and lowering costs. Technologies such as server virtualisation and consolidation can help with all three. Yet many people are still surprised to find just what a significant proportion of their datacentre spend goes on the power consumption of the servers, cooling systems and the real estate in which they’re housed. One Computacenter customer is making savings of high six figures a year just by reducing the electricity bill following a datacentre revamp.
The datacentre current state assessment service from Computacenter is designed to give you a clear understanding of how well your current datacentre is functioning and what improvements you might make. It’s possible to cut power consumption by as much as 80 per cent, as well as lowering support and operating costs and reducing the amount of real estate you need. Sometimes, entire datacentres can be closed by being consolidated with others. In the process, you can ensure your datacentres are more flexible and thus able to accommodate your future needs, as well as today’s.
At the individual device level, manufacturers have become more aware of the need to reduce power consumption and provide power-saving functions. Computacenter offers a client device power audit that examines your current systems and suggests changes that may reduce power consumption by up to 40 per cent. That doesn’t mean you will have to refresh all your IT – in fact, a great deal of older equipment may turn out to be quite power efficient, but you won’t know unless you audit.
There are issues to consider when you dispose of equipment, too. Overflowing landfills and toxic waste are two environmental problems to which IT contributes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to choose devices that pose less of a problem with regard to toxins.
At the end of a product’s life, you need to ensure proper disposal. RDC is Computacenter’s asset management company and has a policy of sending absolutely nothing to landfill, improving significantly on the recently introduced WEEE directive. RDC refurbishes or remarkets about 40 per cent of the assets it treats, offering significant savings or revenue to its customers. This is most effective if the items are no more than 36-42 months old, to maximise remarketing revenue and minimise refurbishment costs. That needs to be taken into account in your purchasing strategies. Another option is to donate the equipment to charities, through RDC.
With the 60 per cent that isn’t reused in some way, RDC recycles all of the material and customers are given mass balancing reports documenting this.
Having to identify those products that are power efficient and free of toxins may seem like an extra burden. But it has been made considerably easier by EPEAT (see box). And Computacenter can also offer its considerable knowledge of the market, gained through close relationships with manufacturers, to help customers with their purchasing choices.
Efficient operation
When it comes to using the technology, there are good arguments for considering changes in your management and organisational culture. As we see in the main features in this issue, you might even want to change the way you do business, using videoconferencing in place of face-toface meetings to which people must travel, and enabling remote and home-based working, which also cuts the environmental impact of travelling. In addition, hot-desking reduces the requirement for office space.
Then there’s how people use the technology they already have, even something as simple as encouraging employees to switch off PCs at the end of the day. This can save tens of pounds per PC per year, which adds up quickly in a large organisation and will make a difference to the overheads of even smaller firms.
The standardisation of print consumables means they are used more efficiently. This not only reduces waste, but also the cost savings you make are increased by your ability to negotiate bulk discounts.
One way of standardising is through careful ‘demand management’. This includes reducing the number of devices you have – not everyone needs a printer of their own (though some will take some convincing). Similarly, you can encourage simple practices such as not printing out documents (including emails) unless absolutely necessary, using recycled paper and using duplex printing to use both sides. You can also look at replacing separate printers, faxes, scanners with multi-function devices – increasing standardisation and reducing support complexity.
THE EASY WAY TO PICK THE RIGHT PRODUCTS
Finding technology products that are energy efficient and have low toxins has become considerably easier. EPEAT (Electronic Products Environmental Attributes Tool) is a web-based tool purchasing tool that rates laptops, desktops and screens against 51 environmental criteria. These are grouped into nine categories such as materials selection, design for end of life, and so on.
The tool was developed over three years by a range of stakeholders including major manufacturers, academic experts, and environmentalists. Registration is voluntary on the part of the manufacturers: however, the US Federal Government has committed that 95 per cent of its spend on laptops, desktops and screens will consist of EPEAT-rated products.
The Green Electronics Council and Computacenter have entered a strategic partnership to promote EPEAT products in Europe. The Computacenter Recommends service will focus, where possible, on EPEAT registered products. Go to: www.epeat.net
Greater agility
This may seem a lot of effort just to reduce your carbon
footprint. But at the same time you will lower costs and
achieve greater business and IT agility – for example, by
having datacentres better able to cope with growing
business and changing requirements. Through the adoption
of practices such as remote working, you will also be better
able to attract wider choice of employees and improve their
work/life balance. And your organisation will be better
positioned to face the future, which is likely to include rising
energy costs, carbon taxation and other environmentrelated
challenges.
However you look at it,
you win – and so does
the planet.
