Telecom and Information Technology
Information Technology and Services, Telecommunications, Software
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Sun Microsystems and IBM
More than 44 million Americans are avoiding commuting by doing at least some work outside the office.
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See the five fundamental steps you can take to understand your company's biggest environmental opportunities.
The explosion of information technology has come with environmental costs: a sharp rise in energy use and significant impacts of manufacturing, using and disposing of electronic devices.
However, many companies are finding ways to reduce electricity use, eliminate toxic chemicals and non-recyclable materials in products, and improve reuse and recycling rates. At the same time, companies are leveraging technology to gather more accurate and valuable environmental data, optimize distribution routes, increase telecommuting, and improve other areas of their businesses.
Make your products and operations more environmentally friendly
- Improve product design - Design out environmental impacts of your products and their packaging to avoid use of hazardous materials, minimize use of natural resources and energy, maximize volume, weight efficiency and durability and improve ease of disassembly, refurbishing and recycling. Read about: The Designer’s Accord.
- Energy efficiency - The average data center is 40 times more energy intensive than an office building. Implement programs and technologies that reduce your use of energy from computers, servers and data centers. Read more about climate and energy saving resources.
- Packaging - Find innovative ways to reduce the amount of packaging used and to increase the amount of post-consumer recycled materials.
- End-of-life - The disposal of used electronic equipment, particularly obsolete computers and mobile phones, is leading to an avalanche of e-waste, toxic metals and chemicals headed to landfills. Develop programs to safely and effectively reduce, reuse and recycle electronic waste.
- Nanotechnology - The desire to create smaller and more efficient processors and computer screens is leading the industry towards nanotechnology solutions. At the same time, this is uncovering new, unknown risks.
Collaborate with your customers and suppliers
- Engage your suppliers - Large producers and purchasers of electronics and computing equipment have a unique opportunity to engage their suppliers in producing equipment that is energy efficient and contains fewer toxic materials. Create scorecards to help review supplier performance and foster competition amongst your suppliers to improve their environmental actions.
- Be part of the solution - Create products and services for your customers that help solve pressing environmental problems, such as smart meters that reduce energy use in homes and businesses or software that helps companies measure, monitor and improve environmental performance.
Examples: What IT companies are doing
- Google has optimized the cooling of data centers to consume roughly half the energy used in conventional data centers, yielding significant cost and carbon savings.
- Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard are reducing the carbon footprint of their Fortune 500 clients by offering new videoconferencing systems that reduce their face-to-face business trips in favor of virtual communication.
- Companies such as GridPoint are producing meters that use information technology to make smarter electric grids and reduce energy use in homes and businesses.
- Through their Great Rivers Partnership, IBM and the Nature Conservancy are deploying high performance super-computers to analyze river systems around the world and inform decision makers on how to preserve them.
Posted: 29-Oct-2008; Updated: 14-May-2009
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