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What is your company’s Sustainability Communications Program like?

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Sustainability

Photo credit _ A l v a r o _

I guess the first question should be does your company have a Sustainability Communications Program? If not, why not?

As I mentioned in my last post, it is now time for everyone to

band together not only at national levels, but at company and community levels to do everything we can to work to reduce our impact on the planet. Don’t rely on your politicians to do it for you. Get together with friends, neighbours, co-workers and make a change.

So, what is your company doing about sustainability? Some companies invest heavily in this space. Others roll it under the marketing umbrella and still more, don’t even have a sustainability policy.

How do you improve your company’s sustainability policies? I don’t know! But more than likely, you or others in your organisation have great ideas about ways your company can be more environmentally responsible. Why not poll them?

Roll out a bottom-up Sustainability Suggestions Wiki in your organisation today. Most people have excellent ideas on how to improve things in their company but assume they will not be listened to. A wiki allows people to make suggestions in a transparent, meritocratic manner.

Incent people to do so. Give prizes for best suggestions every month. Prizes could be anything from something small like a CFL light bulb, or a Current Cost meter, all the way up to sponsorship of an MBA in Sustainable Business, or any number of things in between.

Go further, video and podcast interviews with winners – make them heroes in the company. The rewards for the company will often be cost savings through efficiencies but also a more highly motivated workforce, who see the company as being responsible and caring of what they (the employees) think.

Enabling bottom-up suggestions in this manner (and subsequently acting on them) promotes a “We are all in this together” spirit and empowers people to make a real difference in the fight against climate change, a difference which they may be unable to make as individuals.

Why wouldn’t you do this?

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The temperature imperative!

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Global Temperature Rise

Graph courtesy of the UK’s Climate Research Unit

The graph above, taken from the UK’s Climate Research Unit, is very sobering. I first noticed the graph when Joseph Romm did an excellent analysis of it on his Climate Progress site.

A few points to note from Joe’s piece:

  • * the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s
  • * since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s => global warming is accelerating
  • * 2008, though cooler than most of the 2000s is on track to be almost 0.1°C warmer than the decade of the 1990s as a whole
  • * The 2000s will easily be the hottest decade in recorded history
  • * The “coming decade” (2010-20) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally
  • * The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors’ calculations began in 1960
  • * The fast warming would likely begin early in the next decade — similar to the 2007 prediction by the Hadley Center in Science (see “Climate Forecast: Hot — and then Very Hot“)

In case anyone had any doubts that global warming is occurring, this should set those doubts to rest.

Governments are acting too slowly on this. It is up to individuals and companies to take actions to reduce our impact on the planet.

The companies we cover on this blog: IBM, Microsoft, HP, Siemens, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Dell, SAP, Oracle, Nortel, Cisco, etc. are all making significant efforts to reduce their impacts on the planet (or we wouldn’t be covering them!).

However, as the graph above indicates, our way of life is under threat. Now, as George Monbiot says,

We need to resurrect the old-fashioned virtues of uniting in the face of a crisis, of resourcefulness and community action

We all need to band together not only at national levels, but at company and community levels to do everything we can to work to reduce our impact on the planet. Don’t rely on your politicians to do it for you. Get together with friends, neighbours, co-workers and make a change. Today.

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How Dell and HP could learn from each other

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Transport fumes
Photo Credit aplumb

I received a press release from HP the other day informing me that HP have

qualified all business PC, printing and server products shipped throughout the United States and Canada for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) SmartWay logo labeling program

Perhaps the SmartWay program is well known within the United States but I hadn’t heard of it before so I went to the SmartWay site to have a look.

From the site’s basic information page:

The SmartWay brand identifies products and services that reduce transportation-related emissions. However, the impact of the brand is much greater as the SmartWay brand signifies a partnership among government, business and consumers to protect our environment, reduce fuel consumption, and improve our air quality for future generations.

The site links to the EPS’a Green Vehicle Guide which allows you to compare the fuel efficiency across hundreds of different car models.

However the real meat is in the Smartway Transport section of the site. This is a

collaboration between EPA and the freight sector designed to improve energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions, and improve energy security

So responsible haulage companies can join the Smartway program and get help in becoming more efficient and Smartway certified (joining Smartway is free). Smartway certification then means that as well as reducing costs, responsible shipping companies will pick up extra business from companies like HP who are looking to have a greener supply chain.

However, if HP really wanted to show its commitment to Green they could announce their intention to become a carbon neutral company, as Dell has done.

On the other hand, Dell could take a leaf from HP’s book and also receive approval from the EPA to have the SmartWay logo displayed on its product packaging for the compliance of its shipping network. You are only as Green as your supply chain after all!

[Disclosure – Dell are a GreenMonk client company]

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Dell claims carbon neutrality 5 months ahead of schedule

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In June of this year, Dell re-asserted its aim of becoming the Greenest Technology company on the planet with a post which included nuggets like:

  1. recycled 102 million pounds of IT equipment from customers during 2007, a 20 percent increase over 2006
  2. became the first major computer manufacturer to offer desktop customers Silver 80 PLUS-certified power supplies
  3. the company’s laptops and desktops, already among the industry’s most energy-efficient, are being designed to consume up to 25 percent less energy by 2010 relative to systems offered today and
  4. The company’s carbon intensity (CO2 emissions/revenue) is among the lowest of the Fortune 50 and less than half that of its closest competitor

Then just last week Dell announced that it had met its aim of becoming a carbon neutral company five months ahead of schedule. It did so using a combination of “an aggressive program to improve efficiencies in the company, purchasing green energy directly as well as renewable energy credits and verified emissions reductions” according to Dane Parker, Dell’s Director of Environment, Health, & Safety.

Some have sounded a note of skepticism saying things like:

You have to question whether they have taken all their workers’ commuting into consideration, and the materials (involved) in making a computer, going all the way back to zinc mining

and

Carbon neutrality is a large amount of greenwash. Computer companies should be focusing on the developments made in recent years in the reduction of harmful material inside the computers, and reduction in the power that computers use. With these high claims, companies are setting themselves up to be knocked back down again

And while there is some validity to this, in fairness to Dell, they have implemented a policy that requires their suppliers to report their emissions during quarterly business reviews, so they are pushing this back down the supply chain and it is hard to argue with the fact that Dell’s carbon intensity (CO2 emissions/revenue) is less than half that of its closest competitor.

We need to see a lot more companies following Dell’s lead in this. Having said that, independent verification of the carbon neutral claim by a trusted third party would do away with any lingering doubts about Dell’s commitment to Green once and for all.

[Disclosure – Dell are a GreenMonk client]

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Dell Hybrid hiding its (Green) light under a bushel!

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Screenshot of Dell Hybrid taken from their site

I first heard about the new Dell Hybrid PC from Walter Higgins on Twitter.

My initial reaction was “Dell Hybrid”? Do they have petrol engines and electric motors? Why the Hybrid name? It isn’t immediately obvious from the Dell Hybrid page on Dell’s website.

They look nice, to be sure but what about the Green credentials they are touting?

I then received an email from Dell’s Renee Daulong and she explained:

The Hybrid is about 80 percent smaller than the typical desktop minitower, and uses up to 70 percent less energy. In addition to being extremely energy efficient and Energy Star 4.0 compliant, the Studio Hybrid’s unique packaging was designed to be environmentally responsible:

· Reduced packing materials 30 percent by weight.

· Packing materials are also 95 percent recyclable.

· Reduced printed documentation 75 percent by weight.

· System recycling kit is included.

The Studio Hybrid can personalized with a choice of seven optional, interchangeable external finishes or color sleeves, one of which is made from bamboo.

Some of that information I found subsequently on the Hybrid page if you click on the Design tab about half-way down.

It is superb to see manufacturers being more responsible in their latest PC models but come on Dell, a machine as Green as this should at the very least have a dedicated page highlighting its Green credentials.

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RackSpace’s customers ‘won’t pay a premium’ for Green products?

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Premium
Photo Credit ignescent_infidel

Jon Brodkin wrote a piece in ComputerWorld UK about a survey of RackSpace‘s customers which seems to suggest that they ‘won’t pay a premium’ for Green products. John goes on to extrapolate that they:

found some results suggesting businesses are losing interest in green technology.

There are a number of problems with this assumption. First off you have to realise that Rackspace don’t do co-lo. Rackspace only do managed hosting. So, if I am an IT manager I can’t put my equipment, no matter how energy-efficient, in a RackSpace Data Center, I have to use their equipment. What is not clear from the piece John wrote is what was the ‘premium’ the RackSpace customers were being asked to pay.

Again, if I am an IT manager, I can choose to buy, for example Dell’s PowerEdge™ Energy Smart 2950 III (SV22952), which is cheaper but slightly less powerful than their standard PowerEdge™ 2950 (SV22951). Realistically, the only reason I am going to do this is if it is going to save me money.

As James said previously – the wrong people are paying the electricity bill in companies currently (no pun):

IT doesn’t pay for its electricity. No, seriously, go to your FM manager or IT manager and ask who pays to power your IT properties. The vast majority of IT systems get a free ride on electricity bills, which is one reason its taken so long to fully consider IT carbon costs.

When that changes (and it will) watch IT managers suddenly become extremely interested in the energy ratings of their servers.

Going back to the RackSpace survey, fundamentally I think Rackspace are taking the wrong approach. What they should be doing is increasing prices to their customers across the board to reflect their own increased energy bill – except for those customers who chose to be hosted on energy efficient servers. If RackSpace took that route, suddenly you’d see a an about-face in the number of their customers who are apparently losing interest in green technology!!!

[Disclosure: I am co-founder a director of Cork Internet eXchange (CIX) an energy efficient data center based in Cork, Ireland. CIX charges all customers separately for their electricity usage.]