Posted Oct. 5, 2009
The Green IT Perspective
By Preston Gralla
Plenty of computer and IT vendors have been jumping on the green bandwagon the last several years, with each claiming to be greener than the next. Sometimes, though, the information you get from them has as much to do with marketing as with hard-core facts. Apple, in a recent update of its Web
site, is changing all that. As I explain in my blog, “Apple: We’re Coming Clean on the True Cost of Green,” Apple is now revealing in great detail exactly where its greenhouse emissions come from — and provides a great deal of information about the environmental impacts of its products. Want to know what percent of Apple’s greenhouse emissions comes from the use of its produces, versus manufacturing them? Apple tells you, along with how much emissions it is responsible for, and other important information as well.
Apple did that as a result of a request to a shareholder proposal filed by As You Sow Foundation — and we’ve got the director of the foundation’s Corporate Social Responsibility Program, Conrad MacKerron, weighing in with how effective he thinks Apple’s disclosure is. Check out “Apple’s Greenhouse Gas
“Reporting is a Welcome Step Forward” to see what he thinks.
If you’re looking to use Green IT to save your company money, operate more efficiently, and do some good for the world, you’ll want to get advice from one of the world’s most foremost experts in Green IT — Steven Sams, vice president of Site and Facilities Services in IBM Global Technology Services. Sams’ organization spearheads IBM’s green consulting services, and is one major reason that some people are starting to call IBM Big Green.
Sams will be participating in a free, exclusive webcast titled “The Greening of the CIO — Raising the ROI of IT.” Sams will discuss the full gamut of tools
in the CIO’s growing toolkit, from building high-efficiency data centers to managing energy use throughout a global operation to reducing travel needs
to telepresence solutions….