- Green IT definition
- Green IT axes
- Green IT 2.0
- Green IT'tude
- Some numbers
- Eco-labels
- Greenwashing
- Regulation
Green IT definiton
- What is the green-IT ?
- The green IT or green computing, aims to reduce the carbon footprint generated by the Information Systems business while allowing them to save money.
- More precise definition:
- The green-IT, as defined in the Official Journal of the French Republic on July 12, 2009, the ESTs of information and communication for short eco-ICT, are information technology and communication which design or use can reduce the negative effects of human activity on the environment.
Green IT axes
The two major development axes of the green-IT are:
- The use of green products with low energy consumption.
Publishers and manufacturers to redouble their efforts to market products that consume less energy and intelligent software that can manage resource utilization in real time.
- The implementation of virtualization of servers and workstations.
La Virtualization reduces the number of machines used in an information system while providing processing power, scalability and cost control!
Green IT 2.0 or "IT for green"
There is talk of green IT 2.0 or IT for green ; what is it?
By some definitions, the traditional green IT or green IT 1.0 is to reduce emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions by reducing the carbon footprint of Information Systems or computer science in general. This is essentially what is explained above in the green IT axes section.
In this approach, the green IT 2.0 or "IT for green" is to reduce GHG emissions of the entire organization through the use of new information technologies such as teleconferencing or telepresence and review business processes in the same purpose. This is what we propose in what we call eco-friendly attitudes.
For us, there is no debate: the green IT is a global project and the first one can not go without the other. With the green audit, it is within a simple and a progressive way that a company or an organization will change from green IT 1.0 to green IT 2.0 as this is part of a wider which is that of sustainable development.
Eo-responsible attitude
Adopt the green IT'tude! The use of green computing and virtualization are the first steps to implement a green IT project.
In a sustainable development approach, there are others:
- Politics recycling computer waste
- Internal communication campaign on good practice materials
- Reducing volumes of unnecessary prints
- Optimization of media utilization
- Reducing number of employees' trips
- Development of telework
- Changing business processes under environmental constraints
Some numbers
The following figures are quite eloquent and speak for themselves.
- Computers generates 2% of CO2 emissions from human activity. As far as all the world aircraft fleet! (Gartner Group source).
- Today, most servers and workstations are used between 8 and 15% when they are lit (VMware source).
- One Euro spent in hardware leads 900kg of CO2 emissions (ADEME source)
- In France, consumption of ICT is between 55 and 60 TWh per year, or 13.5% of electricity consumption by end use applications. (Ministry of Environment source)
- The energy cost may now represent up to 40% of the total IT budget of a company (Orange Business Services source).
- With Virtualization could raise the utilization of servers by 20% on average now about 90% (PC Energy Report source).
- 35 to 50% of the electricity consumed by a data center is used to cool the servers (Gartner Group source).
- For 1 € spent on buying a computer, it must spend more than 50 cents in energy. And for the same computer it will provide 71 cents in 4 years (IDC source).
Eco-labels
There exists today a series of eco-labels on various points: consumer, manufacturing, recycling ...
- Blue-Angel defines a set of very broad criteria such as taking into account recycling from product design, reducing pollution in the manufacture of the product, reducing energy consumption, chemical emissions, noise, and Finally, taking into account the end of life computer equipment. Learn more...
- EPEAT is a database that allows companies to evaluate and compare hardware according to their ecological characteristics. Learn more...
- TCO was initially designed to distinguish the screens in good quality and environmentally friendly, eco-Swedish label now covers PCs and servers, mobile phones and printers. Learn more...
- Eco-Label is an attempt of Europe currently in gestation and to establish a global eco-label for all consumer products, including computers. Learn more...
- Energy Star, now in version 5, is only the energy efficiency of hardware. Learn more...
- 80plus aims to increase the energy efficiency of electrical power hardware. Learn more...
What is green washing or greenwashing?
Many unscrupulous companies are starting to offer "green" products, ecological or less harmful to the environment when it is not always true.
Similarly, more and more service companies will "paint" in green or pretend to take into account the environment in their approaches or solutions. Green IT Consulting is born in the green and its founding principle was that the initial recognition of the environmental impact of services, products and solutions it proposes. We did not wait years to put our clothes today environmentally responsible. Our company was founded by professionals as part of the pioneers in this field.
Regaulation
Theoretically, companies should respect the following regulations:
- WEEE : The WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive aims to regulate the collection and disposal of WEEE in the EU. This is the Directive 2002/96/EC of January 27, 2003. Learn more...
- ROHS : The RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances to the environment) directive goal is the restriction of hazardous substances contained in WEEE. It has been transposed from the European directive 2002/95/EC into French law via the WEEE Decree 2005-829 of July 20, 2005. Learn more...
- EuP : The new version of the EuP Directive (European Energy using Products) should go even further and may even cover the WEEE and ROHS directives. Learn more...
