When the benefits of changing to greener products or systems are expressed in terms of money, risk or brand, organizations start to sit up and take notice.
Remember: Carbon dioxide and its equivalents, such as methane and nitrous oxide (referred to collectively as CO2e) are the main focus of concern or governments and other organizations. These harmful emissions provide a yardstick by which progress can be measured with respect to climate change. Some activities connected to IT harm the planet and the people on it in other ways as well. Certain manufacturing processes pollute the air, the soil and the water and deplete non-renewable resources. Such actions bring short-term benefits but they’re unsustainable over a longer timescale.
IT-related CO2e emissions alone have been estimated at 2% of the world’s total. Not only can everyone work together to reduce this figure, but IT itself can support the greening of other processes as well (the remaining 98%)!
Don’t restrict your thoughts to CO2 emissions only — think in terms of ‘before, during and after’ a product’s lifetime when considering the impact on the environment. Whether its energy, equipment or ancillary supplies, each comes with:
The good news is that manufacturers are improving their processes at each of these life stages, from minimizing harm ‘before’ use by employing cleaner and leaner sourcing and manufacturing techniques, by designing products that consume less energy and materials ‘during’ use and helping with reuse and recycling ‘after’ use. Manufacturers are also beginning to produce environmental information that you can use when making your buying choices.
The reach of IT is wide, and every element provides an opportunity to reduce environmental harm. Sometimes the benefits accrue immediately and sometimes they take longer. Sometimes you need to change behaviour and at other times you need a change in procurement or operational systems.
A good way to start cleaning up your IT is to include environmental questions in your purchasing requests. You can find many public databases where suppliers offer information about themselves and their products (check out EPEAT and the Carbon Disclosure Project). Many goods come with labels certifying their environmental standards, such as their recyclability, their avoidance of harmful chemicals and their energy efficiency and so on.
Remember: Your aim in purchasing should be to look at the whole life implications of your acquisitions, including the opportunities for reusing or recycling products when you’ve finished with them!
Once you’ve chosen the products that meet your specifications and environmental expectations, you need to think about how they’re used.
Look around any office and you’ll probably see computers and printers lying idle — unless the devices have a recognized environmental certification or label, or they have a sleep mode, they’re burning up at least half as much power when idle as when they’re working flat out.
Tip: When you’re not using them, drop devices into sleep mode, ready for when you come back. Ideally, if you’re going to be away for a while, you can just turn things off. Don’t forget that machines with external power supplies draw current, even when the device itself is switched off. If the charger feels warm, it’s drawing current.
Consider your printers — use draft and duplex modes to optimise your use of consumables and paper. You can review and share documents on screen and print on demand only, reducing the number of unnecessary prints. Many companies have found that consolidating a large number of personal printers into fewer central models can improve cost management, while saving on energy and paper use.
Tip: Think about replacing your monitor screens, especially if they’re cathode ray tubes, which consume power continuously and were designed with no thought to recycling. Instead, buy flat screen monitors that consume little or no energy when in standby mode. Some computers shift to standby mode automatically after a certain period of inactivity.
Most people use either a laptop or a PDA, or both, when they’re on the move. These bring new issues — do you leave mobile phone, notebook and PDA chargers plugged into a live power supply, even when nothing’s being charged? What do you do with your mobile phone at the end of its life? Most people put them away in a drawer ‘just in case’ rather than reusing them or recycling them. Instead, look out for recycling schemes, ranging from bulk collections (ideal for out-of-date office mobiles) to freepost addresses for small quantities. Equipment is refurbished when possible or stripped for precious metals and components when not (remember to include the power supply when returning used equipment).
After you’ve finished with your IT products, what happens when they’re no longer needed? In nature, organic materials rot down and feed future growth, so why not dismantle products at the end of their lives and use the elements as raw materials for future products? Several reputable computer manufacturers use metal and easily-separated plastics in order to maximize raw material reuse.
Remember: It’s important that the environmental costs of recovery don’t exceed the benefits expected. And that, of course, loops back to design in the first place.
The priorities for all material things are reduce, reuse and recycle — in that order of importance. If you can extend the working life of your IT products, you reduce the environmental consequences of mining, manufacturing, packaging, shipping and disposal.
Can you upgrade something rather than finish using it? If you have to replace it, can someone else inside the organization use it? If not, charities and refurbishing organizations may be able to extend the life of the product. Also, waiting at the end of the line, many organizations, including some manufacturers themselves, are willing to take equipment back and recycle the components into new products.
Although IT devices consume energy, you can use them to control energy, particularly electricity consumption.
Tip: You can use IT systems to take care of building management. For example, using movement sensors, thermostats can be adjusted, lights switched on and off, and computers switched off out of hours and reawakened for software upgrades.
This new section of the PCPC electronic newsletter will provide you, your Centre and the families who use your services with the contact information for organizations that care about the environment and it shows in the products and services that they offer!
Mass Environmental Services Inc.
Contact: Marnie Brown
Telephone/Fax: (705) 652-6544 (office telephone); (705) 927-6547 (cell); (705) 652-1757 (fax)
Email: mlb@massenv.com (email)
General Information: Mass Environmental Services Inc. is a solid waste advisory company that assesses company’s waste management systems. MASS believes that we must work towards waste elimination, not waste management.
MASS distributes a complete line of Canadian made biodegradable cleaners. These cleaners utilize the power of nanotechnology and colloidal micelles to tackle the most challenging situations. All MASS cleaners are children and animal safe with a ‘zero’ hazardous rating.
MASS distributes the Wysi Wipe, a completely biodegradable wipe that contains no added chemicals, is compostable, hypo-allergenic and non-toxic.
MASS also distributes oxo-biodegradable clear waste bags.
MASS believes that through education that they can help to change the world, one household at a time.
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