Green Computing
From Lauraibm
In the Press
Summaries
Full article: The greening of IT: Why less is more (13-Aug-07)
Vendors with newly discovered green credentials will often say: 'If you buy our new servers, in three years the energy savings from reducing cooling will provide payback' and so on. But do these account for the full environmental impact cost in the ROI calculation?
There is also a danger that green IT simply equates to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow climate change. Our fragile ecology is under much more of a threat than that. Green technology must also mean a responsibility towards the extraction and dumping of hazardous chemicals, destroying natural habitats to make way for acre after acre of bio-fuel crops and preventing civil wars in under-developed economies where essential raw minerals for batteries and processors can be found.
There is much we can do as individuals: e.g. lengthen upgrade cycles, and that includes software as this is frequently used as justification for upgrading hardware. A green PC isn't green when it's left switched on, when it's upgraded every 18 months and when it finds its way into a landfill, even if it now contains less toxic chemicals.
