Greenmonk: the blog

This might seem a little circular but i would just like to thank Dan from Greenbang for his kind words about our unconference on Monday.

It seems to Greenbang that holding an energy-saving conference in Las Vegas is quite a funny thing to do. But if you are going to hold a global conference, why not do it in front of some show girls. You just get much more out of your meetings than you would with video conferencing. Energy Camp is a meet-up dedicated to the reduction of information technology’s global carbon footprint.

Actually though Energy Camp is about reducing energy footprints across all of our activities, not just those that are IT-related. Keynote speaker Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s new sustainability czar takes a widescreen view- which is one reason I am so excited about the show. For him IT is only 3% of the problem…

Thanks to LaserGuided for the awesome picture of Vegas at night, under creativecommons Attribution 2.0 license.

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This is kind of pathetic. One luxury car company sues another. Who cares? This news has nothing to do with sustainability. My partners at Re*Move might disagree - they have been big Tesla fans. But from a Greenmonk perspective arguments about IP like this are so last 20th century. Compete on the basis of implementation people. Lower barriers to participation. And besides if you want a muscle car maybe you should buy an Alfa or buy a Pontiac and forget about the planet for a bit. If you want sustainability just drive slower.

Are you familiar with No Impact Man? Its a cool experiment.

In specific terms, the challenge is to take a year to develop and live a no impact lifestyle. Our approach will be to research our ecological options and run down our damage in one area at a time—solid waste, transportation, energy, for example. Our aim, over the course of the year, is to do no net harm to the environment. We’ll wind down in stages.

But to cause no net impact is impossible to do merely by restricting consumption and waste output. Just participating in society makes us responsible for the negative environmental impacts of society’s functioning, even if our personal lifestyle does no harm. To offset our societal ecological debt, we also plan to take actions that will have positive environmental impact. For example, we’ll volunteer with the Nature Conservancy to clean up garbage off the beach. To help sop up our share of the year’s CO₂, we will take part in a reforestation project to help plant trees.

Then there is The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption.

The problem with being off consumption is that you can no longer buy a ‘treat’ for yourself in order to snap out of a bad mood. Being off consumption means no comfort food, no self-gifting, no temporary postponement of pain by the rush of adrenalin triggered off by that perfect purchase.

But I knew that when I went off consumption. I knew that, to resist the temptation to buy, I’ll basically need to be happy all the time. I also knew that I’ll face my first big test as soon as I hit a bad day

I have written before about the Intel-powered central heating. But how about a POWER-heated pool? From Techworld comes a cool story Datacentre used to heat swimming pool. IBM did the design work in conjunction with a company called GIB-Services. Who says you can’t have luxury and sustainability?

The pool is being closed temporarily for repairs this summer, at which time the heat transfer system will be put in place, says GIB-Services CEO Hans-Rudolf Scharer.

“It isn’t so complicated,” Scharer says, explaining that water is used to transfer the heat. “We pump hot water to the swimming pool.”

Excess heat generated by datacentre computers is collected in a storage area, where it heats up water that is piped to a heat exchanger at the pool facility. There, the heated water raises the temperature of the pool water. The process repeats itself as often as necessary with the heat exchanger, true to its name, exchanging heat from one part of the water to another.

Finally - another Techworld story. This time based on a survey from Bell Micro. I am not so into the UK companies aren’t ready to green yet angle (tell me something I don’t know), but one finding quoted in the story really jumped out at me because of its grassroots up implications.

While 84 percent of businesses took green issues seriously, half said employees rather than chief executives were driving the change. 

If employees are driving the agenda, its far less likely to be simple green-washing or tick list filling. Go concerned employee people!

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A while ago it dawned on me what a ridiculous waste of resources the obligatory conference bag is. Plastic carrier bags are not the only bag-related problem we face. Every time you go to a conference you get a bag you really don’t need or want. They’re often poor quality and fall apart quite quickly. So what would be a better approach showing some social responsibility. My friend Ed then came up with a great idea: One Laptop Bag Per Child. Nigel James had crystallised things for a lot of us. SAP to its great credit understood what we were talking and did something about it.

It seems like the shoe has finally dropped, that a lot of schwag is actually drek. I got news from Duke a couple of days ago: This year’s JavaOne backpack is made out of materials that can be recycled.”

Well now comes of more bag sanity from Web 2.0 expo. Cote’ just fired over a link from news.com.

Now that is a lot of gapingvoid designed bags from SXSWi. So apparently Web 2.0 Expo is trying to lessen the environmental impact of the throwaway Events industry.

“It’s a bit hard on the old conscience being employed in an industry (that) creates as much waste as the events industry,” wrote Web 2.0 Expo general manager and co-chair Jennifer Pahlka. “Much is made of the carbon footprint of an event, but I’m well aware of an even more daunting measure, the ecological footprint, which looks at the sum total of resources used. Take a look at all that goes into producing an event the size of Web 2.0 Expo (including what our sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers bring) and you can either get depressed or try to tackle the problem. We’re doing both… We have a long way to go, but I thought I’d share some of the changes we’ve implemented this year.”

Among the changes Pahlka mentioned: Using 100 percent recycled materials for the program guide, attendee direct mail, attendee bag, and event signage; reducing the program guide by a third; recycling badges; providing water coolers and encouraging attendees to bring their own bottles; and more.

Of course, even Pahlka acknowledged that the efforts are only a start. And I do wonder how many attendees will bring their own bottles or recycle their program guides–another initiative.

“One thing I’ve become painfully aware of is that recycling is a good step, but not generating the waste in the first place is orders of magnitude more beneficial to the earth,” Pahlka wrote. “That’s why ‘reduce’ should always be the real goal. We’re working with sponsors on further steps for reducing, and with our vendors on all three Rs. In some areas, we’re aware we’re taking risks. For instance, we’ve tried to limit the print run of the program guide this year, so there’s a chance we’ll run out if people don’t follow our lead and leave their used guides for others to reuse. We hope you will all be tolerant of any errors we make in support of this effort.”

Well done Event Organiser people!

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