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Sustainability in the IT: contribute your bit
18-03-2019 13:58:22
Today, green business operations is becoming more and more important. People can contribute to sustainability in many ways. For example by eating less meat, taking the car less often or taking shorter showers. But in IT, we also play an important part in further sustainability. Every organisation depends on an underlying infrastructure, whether that is in a private data center or anywhere else. And there is a lot to gain there still. Both individual organisations and data centers alike are able to take measures to contribute to a greener world. What is the deal?
Scale size
Data centers are big energy consumers. But due to the high concentration of equipment, it is possible to take some sustainability measures that other businesses often cannot take because of financial reasons, or which at least result in no significant savings. Even a limited decreased percentage of power use saves data centers a significant amount of money, increases their corporate image and contributes to a more sustainable society. The scale size makes it more interesting for data centers to take such measures. That makes it a sustainable choice for an organisation to start employing a data center.
Understanding leads to realisation
To measure is to know, but not everyone lives by that principle yet. It is important for every organisation to measure their consumption patterns. This shows you where there is the most room to improve. The first easy step that many organisations can take, is to eliminate unnecessary hardware in time. Development and testing environments are often running unnoticed after the project is done. Information systems that have already been replaced are also often overlooked.
Sustainable equipment
Sustainability is a noble goal for every IT department, but there is often not enough attention for it. The guarantee of uptime and the handling of tickets are often more urgent issues than sustainability. Still, to make a contribution, IT departments can already look at energy consumption levels when purchasing equipment. It is also advantageous to replace old servers with new, energy efficient varieties. These are often much more economical and do not only contribute to a better environment, but are also cost-saving.
Recycling
The Netherlands is burning through a lot of IT equipment and hardware is continuously written off and replaced. This equipments can be adopted for reuse or recycling. It is not easy to dispose of such equipment responsibly, but here are organisations that have specialised in processing IT waste. This can be done on site. Socially, economically and ecologically speaking, recycling IT equipment is an important issue that requires more attention.
The increasingly digital nature of our society is causing an increase in the importance and use of IT. In many cases, this leads to a larger share in the global CO2 footprint. With a little more attention to this problem, the consequences can be limited though. So take our advantage here and make sure that you, and with you the IT sector, take another step towards a greener world. Want to know more about how you can contribute to a clean internet? Go to https://www.internetschoon.nu/
By: Wido Potters