Green IT

The technology industry has become an essential and inseparable part of everyday life. The various information technology systems used are a significant contributor of waste to environment. Today the greening effort is picking momentum, thanks to the awareness created by voluntary organizations and Government bodies. The negative effects of the toxic e-waste have been so alarming that the IT industry is seriously considering managing and reusing the disposals.

What you can do:
1. Make your hardware vendors responsible for recycling and disposal. Encourage vendors to whom you can return the end-of-life equipment at no cost.
2. Donate useful used equipment after wiping out sensitive data.
3. Purchase low-power hardware whenever possible.
4. Do not use screen savers which are major culprits of power consumption.
5. The power saving features is not usually enabled default in your system. So take effort to leverage these features of your operating systems.
6. Next, when you plan to upgrade, put power saving capabilities on your criteria list.
7. IT managers can contribute by using notebook and desktops that consume less power when in sleep or standby mode.
8. IT managers must question the vendors’ manufacturing processes. They must make queries related to use of environmentally sensitive materials and recycled plastics.
9. IT managers should consider desktop, storage and backup virtualization. This will free up valuable resources and save financially too.

Big companies are reducing the carbon emissions, recycling the waste that will take care of equipment obsolescence, using energy smart servers, and even “Plant a Free for Me” campaigns. Some of the IT giants who have made tremendous contributions to greening are:
1. Sun Microsystems encourage upgrade program, where customers can return the used equipment. A third party vendor dismantles these used equipment and returns useful parts back to Sun.
2. Apple and Microsoft have developed operating systems with power management features. These features can control computers’ energy consumption.
3. Chip manufacturers too have contributed. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has come out with a new quad-core processor. It doubles the power output when compared with dual-core processor while using the same amount of energy and thermal power.
4. Apple bans use of toxic substances like lead, cadmium, mercury and asbestos from its manufacturing process and has also stopped using CRT monitors which contain lead oxide and barium.
5. Virtualization software helps lower energy consumption and cost by reducing the number of machines and servers. It enables the deployment of many operating systems and applications on the same computer simultaneously.

The task is difficult no doubt, but a steady effort from all can surely make the environment greener.