Beyond green ideals

The race to go green seems to have ground to a halt, at least to a degree, thanks to the petrol price (which recently enjoyed six months of drops) and the power situation, namely we have power.

The petrol price is on the rise again and winter is on the horizon, which may, once again, send any number of corporates and consumers back to market for greener goods. What this says about human nature we'll leave to your imagination. What it means for organisations, however, is yet another drive towards energy efficiency. This drive is going to have to be managed and orchestrated relatively carefully if it's going to yield positive results.

Green IT, and green IT policy, is still pretty new in South Africa. Those companies that do have a handle on it either implemented policy from a global parent (example, Bytes Document Solutions aka Xerox, and Gestetner, quoted here) or started a while ago, like Dimension Data, which kicked its Carbon-Friendly Infrastructure project off roughly two years ago.

Certainly, the bulk of companies interviewed for this feature don't have a clue. Respondents were au fait with the basics of, for example, why a multifunction device is better than several single-function devices, or how virtualisation saves money, but costs a ton in licensing fees. Very few of them could even begin to articulate policy and how to go about setting one up, let alone provide useful advice on sustainable policy. This is due to the immaturity of the local market, and should change as green becomes more entrenched.

Says Keith Weaver, divisional manager of technical services at Bytes Document Solutions: “It's all in its infancy locally. We've been tagging onto Xerox's international green policies. We're not a manufacturer, but because of what Xerox does, we've had initiatives going for a while, like sending cartridges back overseas for recycling. The Altron Group [which Bytes is part of] has started a sustainability initiative,” he adds.

“Each group in the company is developing a baseline to establish where it is [along the green road] and how far it's going to go in the future. The initiative kicked off two months ago and Altron has the auditors involved in drawing up a policy, so it's more than just a self-assessment process. It's a key focus area for [Altron CEO] Robbie Venter. He's adamant this is going to go across the organisation.”

Gestetner South Africa TQM manager Kevin Wilson-Smith says his organisation has gone “cradle-to-grave green” and is now looking to assist its clients to do the same.

Dimension Data CTO Alpheus Mangale says Dimension Data's approach is to link green policy to IT strategy. “You need to link your green initiatives to your IT initiatives. IT's imperatives are around cost reduction, improved productivity and reducing complexity. If you don't link your green policy to those imperatives, it will be just another policy that people ignore.”

As noted, policy is easier to discuss than draw up. As far as green IT goes, there are also a variety of complicated factors that need to be considered: do you know how much power your organisation consumes in the first place?

An effective awareness or education programme is required.

Kevin Wilson-Smith, TQM manager, Gestetner SA

Says Tim James, director at SustainableIT: “If you look at green IT holistically, you need to look at it from two perspectives. The one is getting IT's house in order [in order] to be green. The other is how you can apply technology as part of going green.”

A policy should ideally encompass both. The addition of more IT equipment will impact the effect of greening the IT department, and it's important to ensure the ultimate aim of the project - going green, or greener - is met.

Policy must take a procurement-to-disposal approach if it's going to have any real impact. This, says James, means bringing together the procurement people and the ICT department.

“You need to take a look at procurement policy criteria,” he says. “You need to take a holistic view and ensure you get the message out across the organisation.”

Says Gestetner's Wilson-Smith: “The first, and most important requirement, is for a company to gain an understanding of the various impacts that IT has in terms of the environment. These impacts range from inputs (the environmental damage done due to production processes) through to outputs (the environmental damage directly resulting from a company's activities). The common assumption is that IT is basically clean in relation to the environment, but consideration of the various inputs involved - the manufacture of IT resources, the effective operation of equipment, the need for environmentally responsible IT partners and subcontractors, and the need to dispose of redundant equipment - shows this is not the case.”

Says SustainableIT's James: “Companies need to look at where energy is consumed in the organisation. It differs across the organisation and across different sectors. Government and financial services, for example, are large consumers of energy used to run IT infrastructure. Manufacturing, energy, petroleum and industrial organisations consume more energy in the production process. Those types of organisations need to start saying, 'Hold on. It's about using IT to make production more efficient'.”

Notes Wilson-Smith: “Once an understanding of the role of IT in relation to the environment is gained, a company is then in a position to start developing a green IT strategy, or alternatively, to start playing an active role in any environmental management system that it may already have implemented.

“Two key requirements to moving forward, if progress is to occur, is to secure commitment by management and staff buy-in,” he states. “In both instances, an effective awareness or education programme is required. A company can then develop a policy, which would guide the implementation - by demonstrating management and company commitment.”

Dimension Data's Mangale concurs: “Your green policy must be lived and become part of the company culture. When people live company values, they know that everything they do has to be, in this case, green. That's when things happen.”

Says James: “Because of the emergence of China and India, for example, more and more people want access to IT devices. So, despite the efficiency gains [brought about by green initiatives], IT's carbon footprint is going to go through the roof. By 2020, the footprint will have tripled to 1.5 gigatons of CO2 emissions. Global per capita CO2 footprint needs to be reduced from seven tons per capita per year to two tons by 2020. If IT's footprint is increasing threefold, then where will that efficiency come from? Taking advantage of the efficiency gains that IT brings to business is the only way we're going to sort this one out.”

Each group in the company is developing a baseline.

Keith Weaver, divisional manager of technical services, Bytes Document Solutions

James has a point that has perhaps been missed by many green punters. Replacing one's data centre infrastructure with new, more efficient infrastructure is fine. But manufacturing new equipment has a green cost associated with it. And then there's old equipment to dispose of. The same rationale could be used across any type of infrastructure, not necessarily IT, across any organisation.

The point is a policy needs to ensure that the company doesn't increase its carbon footprint through the equipment it manufactures and old equipment it disposes of improperly, for example. It needs to ensure there is a solid benchmark against which progress can be measured and that the organisation doesn't go green for the sake of it, but because of the real value that it, and the environment, can derive from such an initiative.