Save energy and minimize the environment footprint for business benefits and cost reduction.

Astonishingly, IT has brought us not only convenience, but it has caused serious pollution and devours the energy beyond imagination. “Globally, about 130 million new PC’s and 1 billion cell phones are produced each year.” [1] However, less than 10% of them are recycled. In China, a developing country with overwhelming IT products, the largest hydropower station – the Three Gorges Hydropower Station – which can produce 84.7 billion kwh [2] of electricity a year, can only be sufficient for all the IT products in China. As the public claims to protect the environment prevail around the world, the IT entrepreneurs find it quite necessary to take part in the go-green program in this industry.

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As a leader of a medium or small of IT enterprise, what should you do to go green with your enterprise? Here is a brief list with detailed explanations.

  • To cultivate green IT culture in your enterprise
  • To save energy
  • To recycle whatever recyclable

To Cultivate Green IT Culture in Your Enterprise

It is a wise choice to do a green IT business in this century. You need to cultivate the green enterprise culture in your enterprise, with the aid of the logos, banners, documents, and trainings etc. The employees should know well that you are pursuing the go-green idea, and you want them to take part in it. It is, actually, an honor to have the go-green mark on your enterprise’s logo. When this idea is deeply rooted in your employees, your clients can also sense the spirit of your enterprise. The enterprise culture means a lot to a medium or small size enterprise. You are showing to the others that your enterprises are environment friendly. With the ethic well advertised, you can influence more people related to your business, including your employees, clients. What are the things that reflect your ethic to go green?

  • Logos
  • Banners
  • Brochures
  • Business Documents
  • Working Surroundings
  • Office environment
  • Product Categories
  • Training Materials

Do what you can to cultivation an enterprise culture which advocates going green, and you can benefit from more than one aspect.

To Save Energy

It takes 0.4kg coal to produce 1 kwh electricity. To save electricity is, indirectly, to help reduce the carbon dioxide in the air, the burnt coal dust pollution. What should you do to save electricity?

  • Develop power-saving equipment
  • Use the power-saving parts and equipment in your products.
  • Virtualization
  • Shut off the applications when they are idle.
  • Replace CRT
  • Printer Consolidation
  • Power Management
  • Change the Lights

If your enterprise focuses on the product-developing technology, try to develop power-saving equipment for your customers. Adopt high technology, and cooperate with the related green IT organizations. It is possible that you can get assistance financially and technically with their help. Some investors are interested in investing into green IT enterprises. Your products can use the power-saving components, too. For example, you can use low-power driven CPU instead of the high-power driven ones. Intel CPU is better than AMD CPU in this aspect. Semiconductors, ICs, resistors etc, all the electric parts can contribute to the saving of electricity. So, when sourcing, you should control the quality of the electric parts which will be used in your products.

Virtualization can save the power greatly, which can enable you to pay much less for the electricity bills. If virtualization is applicable to your enterprise, do use it. You can use virtual platform, enabling it to share the same hardware which supports several platforms. If you apply this technology in your enterprise, you will find that it can save money by 30% to 50% to run your platform.

According to the green enterprise culture, ask your employees to shut off the computers when they don’t use them. When the computers are idle, they are still consuming electricity. If the hard disc and CPU are still running, you will pay much more for nothing. So, it is necessary to train your employees to save power whenever possible. It is a part of the go-green program in your enterprise. Printers should be switched off when they are idle, too. You can also replace the CRT monitors by LCD monitors. The latter consumes much less power. 

What’s more, there must be lights in the working places and offices. If the lights are incandescent lights, change them into fluorescent lights, or better, LED lights. Compared with incandescent lights, the fluorescent lights can save power by 70%, and the LED lights can save up to 98%. If a 60 W incandescent light keeps switching on for 17 hours, the LED light with the same brightness can keep lighting for 1,000 hours! In order to manage the above mentioned well, you’d better apply a power management system. Power management system will make things easy. You can control your budget on that.

To Recycle Whatever Are Recyclable

E-waste becomes a more and more serious problem. As you know, the recycling of the IT products around the world is less than 10%. In the US alone, there are over 500 million obsolete computers accumulated over the last decade. How to deal with them then? The components and electric parts contain poisonous minerals, causing serious pollution to the eco-system on this planet. Therefore, you are wise to recycle your products. On the one hand, you can help protect the environment; on the other hand, you can save money in the long run. You can recycle:

  • The whole unit of your products
  • The parts and components of your products
  • The package of your products

Computer producers can recycle most of the parts, so can the server producers. Batteries can be recycled, too. Whatever can be recycled should be recycled, including the packages of your products. If your products are packed with plastic boxes, it is easy for you to recycle them. You can directly pay for some parts that can be reused later, or you can let your distributors collect the recyclable parts. Just find the way applicable to you. In the US, “only about 12% of discarded computers and cell phones are recycled” [3]. You should do something to increase the percentage. Green IT doesn’t want to see a low percentage of recyclable IT products. What would you say? Do something, and you are wise to adopt the go-green idea in your enterprise.

All in all, you are great to carry on a green IT business, and greater to know how to apply the go-green program in your enterprise. To cultivate the green enterprise culture is to go green with your staff. The easiest and most effective way is to save energy, enabling your to pay much less for the electricity bill and to help control the pollution related to power industry. When you produce something, take the recycling into consideration. Thinking for the next generations, it is wise of you to go green with your enterprise, and you can benefit from what you do in the long run.

References

  1. Right column, Green IT Flash, http://www.greenit.net/products_greenitindex.html.
  2. By March 5 Three Gorges Power Station Generating Capacity Totaled 296 Billion KWH, China News, Jiang Shiqiang and Wuzhi, http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2009-03/05/content_1251339.htm
  3. Right column, Green IT Flash, http://www.greenit.net/products_greenitindex.html