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Green Tech

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Green Tech

How to Plan and Implement Sustainable IT Solutions

AMACOM,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

The paperless office never took off, and now, instead of saving the planet, IT is contributing to its destruction.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

A company’s energy and technology requirements are considerable: Think of all those plugged-in, energy-draining workstation computers, printers, faxes, modems and copy machines, as well as servers and data centers, burning away the watts. Multiply a single company’s energy use by millions of businesses around the world. It all adds up to environmental degradation, which the planet can no longer sustain. The first step to a solution is figuring out how your organization can improve. IT professionals Lawrence Webber and Michael Wallace suggest practical actions your company can take to reduce its energy requirements and to deal with its toxic-waste disposal problems. They delve into the nitty-gritty details of how your firm can cut back on its information technology (IT) expenditure by going green. Their explanations of various U.S. legal conventions and international environmental standards are especially useful. getAbstract recommends this hands-on manual as a valuable planning resource for IT managers who want to lead their departments and their companies into the new, green mandate for business.

Summary

Information Technology: Helping to Kill Planet Earth

The computer revolution was supposed to replace paper and save billions of trees, thus preserving the environment. Things have not worked out that way. In fact, computers have made matters worse. They use so much energy to power units and cool servers that IT-related energy is now a major annual cost for businesses. Manufacturing computer components, including chips, drives, screens, keyboards, monitors and other assorted hardware, pollutes the environment. Outdated and broken computer equipment and peripherals overwhelm landfills.

To prevent further environmental degradation, “green” your IT department. This will not be easy. Computers contain “steel, aluminum, copper, petroleum” and other nonrenewable resources. Nevertheless, companies that implement sustainable, “reduce, reuse, recycle” policies regarding their purchase, management and disposal of IT assets can cut back substantially on their carbon footprints, help protect the planet and reduce their costs. Green IT has these three characteristics:

  1. “It must use energy efficiently” – The cost of running equipment ought to...

About the Authors

Lawrence Webber is an IT professional with more than three decades of experience. Michael Wallace is an information services professional with more than 25 years of experience. Both work in the commercial sector.

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