Sun and the Environment

From Lauraibm

Contents

In the News

Summaries

Full article: Sun launches new Eco Innovation Initiative (10-Sep-07)

Sun Microsystems has announced a suite of programs and solutions to help customers design more energy-efficient, eco-responsible datacenters while saving money. Among the tools announced are three Eco Ready Kits:

  1. The Sun Eco Assessment Kit provides a methodical approach to analyzing data center energy efficiency;
  2. the Sun Eco Optimization Kit helps customers optimize, consolidate, refresh, and recycle their hardware infrastructure; and
  3. the Sun Eco Virtualization Kit offers virtualization solutions that enable better asset utilization and datacenter energy efficiency.

In order to grasp the reality of these limitations, objective assessment is an indispensable tool in helping educate IT professionals as well as top-level management. Once organizations have a clear understanding of their power and thermal envelopes in the data center, then follow-on services such as optimization would become a no-brainer for the data center manager.

Full article: Sun Goes Green in its Data Centre (21-Aug-07)

Sun has consolidated its multiple European data centres into a single UK facility as part of the firm's bid to reduce its environmental impact. The UK datacentre – located in Blackwater – consolidates multiple European datacentres from Norway, Prague and Holland into single facility. Sun said this has reduced server and storage space by 80%. And by changing the design of the datacentres, the vendor has reduced the number of racks from 95 to 5, which impacts on the square footage required. The vendor already claims to have slashed its energy consumption by a third this year. The head of public policy for Sun UK, said the vendor has also managed to resell, reuse or recycle the servers it has taken from its datacentre.

He said Sun also used in-the-rack cooling, rather than floor cooling, and runs it datacenter warmer than average: "By using in-the-rack cooling, instead of floor cooling, we can run different parts of the datacentre at different speeds, depending on how mission critical the application is. We run our datacenters at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Most organisations run datacentres at 68 degrees Fahernheit. For every degree warmer we run the data centre, that's 4% of our cooling budget saved, as well as being better from an environmental perspective."

By "getting our house in order" Barrington said Sun has also launched a set of "green service offerings" for its customers. UK customers that are already using this sustainable technology model include Betfair, United Utilities and Centrepoint.

Full article: Sun Launches New Eco Innovation Initiative To Unite Tech Innovation With Eco Leadership (21-Aug-07)

This is a Sun press release detailing its new offerings.

Full article: Sun touts energy-efficient data centre drive (22-Aug-07)

Another article spawned by the same press release.

MI Summary

Sun are focused on minimising the environmental impact of their operations, they are committed to reducing their carbon footprint and have set the target of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the 2002 level by the year 2012. In addition to reducing their energy consumption Sun is working to develop an alternative energy strategy, this will contribute to shrinking their carbon footprint.

Sun has the vision of “greening” their data centres by making them smaller and more energy efficient so that they emit less carbon and cost less, the aim is to achieve this without compromising capacity and security.

Sun has an extensive recycling program which allows them to divert tons of material from landfills; the program covers waste reduction, office paper, pallet, cardboard, foam and computer equipment recycling.

Sun has a strong portfolio of eco-responsible products; they aim to design all products with energy efficiency and eco responsibility in mind, whilst continuing to deliver industry leading performance.

What the Vendor says about itself

Eco Responsibility

At Sun, we create technology so that more and more people can get connected, share, interact, and solve problems. And as participation grows, we're committed to building products that are dramatically smarter, safer, and more eco responsible — from product and packaging design to power usage to our global take-back and recycling programs.

Doing Our Part to Reduce Power Consumption

With a billion people participating online today, the network consumes more than 100 billion kilowatts of electricity and costs businesses around $7.2 billion in utility bills annually. And since the power consumption of datacenters doubled between 2000 and 2005, it's no surprise that 25 percent of an IT budget is consumed by energy costs alone. Some analysts say infrastructure power usage will soon cost more than the hardware itself.

So it's clear: what's good for the environment is imperative for business.

This axiom drives Sun's commitment to designing and delivering eco-friendly processors, systems, programs, and services that help businesses reduce their power consumption, environmental impact, and energy costs.

(1)

Greening our Business

At Sun, the first step in being eco responsible is "greening" our business, or minimizing the environmental impact of our own operations. From carbon emissions to energy usage and the efficiency of our datacenters, we are determined to integrate eco principles into every aspect of our operations and deliver value for all of our stakeholders, including the environment.


Sun's Carbon Footprint

Sun is firm in its commitment to a 20 percent reduction of our U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over 2002 levels by 2012, which was made as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Leaders program. We have taken a giant leap in establishing such an aggressive GHG reduction goal. Achieving our goal will take a concerted effort as well as a coordinated strategy, and will involve the following steps:

  • Continue to fine-tune our 2002 baseline GHG emissions data, on which our 20 percent reduction goal is based
  • Establish tracking systems to capture and measure our GHG emissions, and report our findings publicly and against our baseline data
  • Develop a global baseline and set reduction targets for all operations worldwide by the end of calendar year 2007
  • Continue to reduce energy usage in our datacenters, converting them into eco responsible facilities
  • Develop an alternative energy strategy


Sun's Energy Usage

More than 90 percent of Sun's carbon footprint comes from energy use. We are committed to openly sharing our energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions data and encourage other organizations to do the same.

(2)

Alternative Energy

While reducing energy consumption will have the greatest impact on shrinking Sun's carbon footprint, another viable approach is to use renewable energy. Sun is working to develop an alternative energy strategy that will allow us to fulfill more of our energy needs off the grid by using solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources.

In fact, in the United Kingdom, Sun has been purchasing renewably generated energy for a number of years. We believe that by investing now in renewable energy, Sun can help create and sustain a marketplace for alternative sources, and that could ultimately lead to lower energy costs for both consumers and businesses.

(3)

Greening Datacentres

Sun's datacenters, like those of many large companies, account for a sizable portion of our real estate footprint and a significant share of our total energy usage. Datacenters typically have large numbers of servers located closely together, emitting large amounts of heat that need to be cooled with special equipment, thus requiring even more energy consumption.

Sun is moving toward "greening" our datacenters — in other words, making them smaller and more energy-efficient so that they will emit less carbon and cost less. Our vision is to accomplish all of this without compromising capacity and security. We will publicly report on our efforts to reduce datacenter energy use and CO2 emissions

(4)

Recycling

Sun's recycling programs consistently divert tons of materials from landfills, and save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Waste Reduction

Sun's internal waste reduction program is aimed at reducing:

The amount of excess printed materials ordered and discarded Excessive office paper consumption by configuring all printers to print on both sides of the paper The use of unnecessarily large envelopes

Office Paper Recycling

Sun's Office Paper Recycling program focuses on waste that can be easily recycled by employees nationwide. Recycling and trash bins located in each office, in conference rooms, break areas and copy rooms allow and encourage employees to recycle materials, including:

  • White paper
  • Proprietary office paper & materials
  • Overhead transparencies
  • Beverage cans and bottles

Sun doesn't stop there:

  • Old fluorescent light tubes are accumulated and sent for recovery and recycling of heavy metals (mercury) in the tubes, the steel caps, and the glass itself
  • Toner and fax cartridges are collected and recycled
  • Binders are reused by local schools and charitable organizations
  • Employees conduct periodic "Clean Sweeps" to recycle furniture, CDs, software and hardware

Pallet Recycling

Sun's closed-loop recycling program for pallets has been operating at it's Newark, Cal and Hillsboro, Or. warehouse, manufacturing, and delivery sites for years. This money saving program:

  • Consistently operates in the black
  • Keeps 100% of Sun's used pallets out of landfills
  • Won a 1990 Business Environmental Award from the Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation

Sun's pallet coordinator offers rebates for returned pallets and discounts when Sun accepts used or reconditioned pallets. The pallets are manufactured according to specifications from Sun's engineering department, and the new pallets are delivered to the required sites. The company also picks up used wood and foam pallets from each site at regular intervals and returns them for re-use.

Cardboard Recycling

Sun campuses and cafeterias that generate large amounts of corrugated cardboard are equipped with compactors that reduce the material to a manageable size. A waste disposal company then recycles it.

Foam Recycling

Foam packaging peanuts and inserts are collected in special bins at Sun's offices and manufacturing sites, and then picked up and recycled by one of the company's recycling partners.

Computer Equipment Recycling

Used computer equipment is collected and sent to a third-party asset recovery vendor for recycling or re-manufacture.

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Efficient Product Solutions

Sun leads the industry in offering a portfolio of eco responsible products that deliver high-performance, sustainable computing solutions to address customer IT needs. Our goal is to design all of our products with energy efficiency and eco responsibility in mind, while continuing to deliver the industry-leading performance customers have come to expect from Sun.

Product Related Goals

As part of our Eco Responsibility initiative, Sun established specific product-related goals that we are working to achieve over the next several years.

By 2008, Sun intends to introduce several new products that offer 30 times more performance while using one-tenth the energy and generating half the heat compared to products offered in 2003. We will implement a thin-client IT architecture — where processing takes place on the network — in all Sun facilities, to significantly reduce both power and materials consumption.

(6)

Article: "The Greenest Computer Company Under the Sun"

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