No one cares about green IT
Greenwashing dirty IT laundry in public
IT'S JUST AS we suspected. UK IT managers couldn’t give a reboot about green IT.
Only one in 20 of them even bother to ask their IT suppliers anything green related. The vast majority don’t care with 87 per cent of those without a green policy saying they’d adopt one if they had to. The kind of pressure that would make them green is regulation, which comes out tops for 69 per cent, 29 per cent would listen to their customers, 14 per cent say they’d listen to suppliers (why?). And the good old stand up and be counted three per cent said “nothing would spur them to implement a green policy.” Well done, lads. That’s the spirit!
Just 14 per cent of people see IT as the biggest contributor of CO2 in their organisation and half say this is definitely not the case. Quite right too! It is all those kettles, and sandwich toasters that are doing the damage not to mention the MD‘s trouser press.
That must be why the vast majority list their green policy as recycling cans and paper, recycling hardware (they have to, it's the law) and using energy saving light bulbs.
Ask them what green policies they’ve adopted and just 13 per cent of them say it includes virtualisation, 11 per cent include swapping U1 servers for blades and the same number are considering video communications.
Of those who have implemented a green policy, 12 per cent reckon they’ve saved some energy.
Most agree that so kind of green policy would save energy eventually, which is nice to know.
Distributor Bell Micro paid for the research among 350 IT personnel, 100 with over 250 staff, in January this year and produced a report: Passing the Green IT Buck, off the back of it.
Comments
who cares
Who cares about CO2, it is getting ridiculous. The real pollution are things like sulfur, mercury, lead, etc. yet no one says a thing about them. CO2 can't poison our water and turn our kids retarded.energy efficient corporates
In my old job i used to cover on of the "big" uk financial accountancy firms.Their idea of green, was switching all laptops and desktops from "always on" to montior off after 30 mins, and hard disks off after 3 hours.
Saving the earth one step at a time lol.
Mind you they had a server for each individual service, such as AD, email, sql etc on very limited user counts
It's ok to steal..REALLY!
it makes ya feel better int he morning to give the nod so what some think of as a sod..or is that a hod?
no wait!!!!!!!!!reverse that...
lmao
MD?
Maybe I don't understand the abbreviation as a "yank," but what does MD stand for, other than medical doctor?apathy Z toxic environments
(the Z is for that feedback-loop chemistry symbol)CO2 is really only a problem because there's not enough plants and trees to eat it; instead there's less and less of those day by day.
In terms of climate disruption, that happens because areas of land are cleared of trees and other vegetation, so that in turn changes things like CO2 levels, and that in turn has an effect on the weather because suddenly there's alterations in clouds being able to form there & what precipitation and evaporation takes place, and therefore air currents change too, and temperatures change because of that, and that all affects the areas around it, and then their climates change, then they effect the areas around them...and so it goes on.
And the air is way worse the less plants there are around too (well, unless they're sprayed with chemicals of course), cause they do stuff like emit oxygen and absorb heavy metals.
The toxic stuff in electronics can be a problem depending on how it is sourced, and refined, and if they end up in a landfill or otherwise thrown out.
Some PCB etching for example, is really wasteful and toxic - most of the copper isn't even used.
Some of the bigger companies are actually getting around to stripping their old (professional done smt and gold-paths etc) PCBs because of all the gold and reusable components on them.
As far as end-users go, other than buying the likes of energy-star and RoHS rated / certed components, Green IT is about power efficiency.
There's plenty of 80Plus PSUs at consumer level - most are standard rated, there's a few bronzes, and probably not any silver or gold stamped PSUs yet;
the point of using those is that you draw less wasted mains power - the 80 plus meaning 'above 80% power efficiency'.
The other part of that is about matching system requirements to actual wattage needed on components. Hence you can get -ITX sizes of motherboards with low-power CPUs, and hard drives that draw less power when on, and printers that use various eco-print settings, and so forth.
It saves you money obviously if you use less power; the problem is that few workplaces have been bothering to spec their hardware with those concerns in mind - so until it's time to buy new equipment, it's going to cost them extra short-term to buy in the lower-power datacenters and servers and whatever else.
Also, some people - as with lots of job areas not just in IT - don't really know what they are doing, and anything that shines a light on questions such as 'how did you decide on what equipment you bought in, what's your upgrade policy' are more the kinds of things they'd prefer to avoid having to answer.
ie - say you're the MD (managing director I reckon they mean) of IT, and you have to go tell (or compete for funding with) the other MDs or higher-ups that you need more money to get new equipment - it'll probably mean having to divulge that all along you've been costing them extra in electricity bills, because the power-draw wasn't considered when the hardware was being specced and installed.
So it makes them look bad & can put their job at risk then, so they're less likely to go ask for the extra funding - until it becomes a law.
In any case, getting power off the grid at all is very wasteful anyway, cause about 66% of what they generate is lost just in supplying it over long distances.
That's a lot of wasted non-renewable fuel before it even gets to the office / home / factory.
@Frank - Managing Director
MD is an abbreviation for Managing Director when the context is about companies in the United Kingdom. In this article, the Managing Director is pressing one's pants with a trouser press and producing a supposedly unacceptable amount of pollution, while preparing for one's next business meeting, such as a meeting of the Board of Directors.