Introduction

In today’s global business and trade environment, the explosive growth of the Internet, digital computing and global IT infrastructures leads a growing electronic waste problem throughout the world.
Over 850 million PCs are turned on every day. And they consume an immense amount of electricity. Most of it is provided by burning fossil fuels. This process emits pollutants, sulfur, and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These emissions cause respiratory disease, smog, acid rain, and global climate change.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that in 2005, discarded electronics amounted to 1.9 to 2.2 million tons in the United States -- and the overwhelming majority ended up in landfills. Globally, the volume of electronics discarded has ballooned recently, with the environmental group Greenpeace estimating it amounts to 20 to 50 million tons generated each year.
From the largest scale—the earth—to the smallest scale of a classroom or an office, the environmental impact of today’s PC architecture is a tremendous growing problem. Unfortunately, the impact is largely unaddressed and often unrecognized. In these times of high energy costs and climate change (global warming), enterprises, governments, and society at large have the social responsibility to tackle environmental issues and adopting environmentally sound practices through greening the IT products, applications, services, and practices.

Reference:

Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their impacts by Ruediger Kuehr and Eric Williams

"The state of green IT adoption". Forrester Consulting. September, 2008 

"Time to deal with e-Waste in the December", 9, 2007 edition of The New York Times.

What is green computing?

In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program which is designed to promote and recognize energy-efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode among consumer electronics. The term "green computing" was probably coined shortly after the Energy Star program began; there are several USENET posts dating back to 1992 which use the term in this manner.


Green computing or green IT, refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. It is "the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems—efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment.


Green IT also strives to achieve economic viability and improved system performance and use, while abiding by our social and ethical responsibilities. Thus, green IT includes the dimensions of environmental sustainability, the economics of energy efficiency, and the total cost of ownership, which includes the cost of disposal and recycling is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently."


The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry; reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product’s lifetime, and promote recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste.


The video below gives us a brief review of what the green IT looks like:



Source: IT going green from YouTube ReutersVideo

Reference:


Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_computing

Jack Lesley Jr. (May, 2009)  Ten steps to green IT- Green Computing from http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jack_Lesley_Jr

Benson, Laurie. “Visions: One company’s approach to green best practices.” Wisconsin

Approaches to green computing

To comprehensively and effectively address the environmental impacts of computing/IT, we must adopt a holistic approach and make the entire IT lifecycle greener by addressing environmental sustainability along the following four complementary paths:


• Green use -- reducing the energy consumption of computers and other information systems as well as using them in an environmentally sound manner
• Green disposal -- refurbishing and reusing old computers and properly recycling unwanted computers and other electronic equipment


• Green design -- designing energy-efficient and environmentally sound components, computers, servers, cooling equipment, and data centers


• Green manufacturing -- manufacturing electronic components, computers, and other associated subsystems with minimal impact on the environment


Modern IT systems rely upon a complicated mix of people, networks and hardware; as such, a green computing initiative must be systemic in nature, and address increasingly sophisticated problems. Elements of such a solution may comprise items such as end user satisfaction, management restructuring, regulatory compliance, disposal of electronic waste, telecommuting, virtualization of server resources, energy use, thin client solutions, and return on investment (ROI).

Reference:
Rational Approches to Green Computing from http://hubpages.com/hub/Green-IT-or-Green-Computing


Paul Wardley (September 25, 2006) Computeractive from http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/features/2164952/sensible-green-computing

Green IT Power Management

Figure 2. Plug load in commercial building: mostly PCs

Source: The Cadmus Group(Base case Energy use at NYSERDA office)

In recent history, the United States’ power grid has been taxed by wide-scale power emergencies on the East Coast in 2003 and in California in the early 2000s. With concerns about decreasing oil reserves, energy price spikes and global warming, the IT industry has begun to place greater emphasis on reducing power consumption in data centers and in the hardware used by business customers.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) has introduced the Deskstar P7K500 desktop hard drive, which offers the industry’s lowest power consumption among hard drives in its class. The Deskstar P7K500 hard drive provides customers with industry-leading power consumption – up to a 40-percent improvement over previous-generation products – by reducing power in both idle and active modes. This reduction was achieved by using the same system-on-chip (SOC) that is used in Hitachi’s Travelstar™ 2.5-inch mobile product line, where low power has long been a key design attribute to maximize battery life in notebook PCs. This SOC incorporates Hitachi Voltage Efficiency Regulator Technology (HiVERT™) in which switching regulators are used in place of the less-power-efficient linear regulators in the voltage reduction processes. Also included in the SOC is a more power-efficient module for the SATA and PATA interfaces.


Power management of company computers presented a significant untapped opportunity for conservation. Dell is firmly committed to meeting energy conservation benchmarks in manufacturing its products. The company is also determined to conserve energy within the corporation by improving the power management of approximately 50,000 in-house computers. In many offices, Jay Taylor, senior engineer global strategist at Dell says computers are left on overnight, wasting power for those approximately 100 hours per week that they are not being used. “During the off-hours, those computers are creating heat,” he adds. “And by creating heat, computers require buildings to use more cooling, which uses even more energy. The technology is now available to make significant improvements in conservation, and we set out to deploy that technology to both conserve energy and cut costs.” By deploying to Dell 50,000 client computers with 1E’s NightWatchman and SMSWakeUp applications, which save files and closes applications and shuts down or places into sleep mode computers in the Microsoft Windows environment while preventing data loss and application errors, Dell expects to realize up to a 40 percent reduction in computer-related energy costs, which could translate into US$1.8 million in savings annually.

Reference:
Dell on Dell: Energy Efficiency from http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/casestudies/688_2007_DellonDellEnergy_79991399.pdf

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-170101873.html


Dr. Jim Wong(2008) Technology Innovition for Eco-friendly HDDs from http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/7488DD18DCFAAB91862573790003DB44/$file/Eco-friendlyHDDs_wp_final.pdf

Green IT Server virtualization

'Virtualization’ is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources. Virtualization, also sometimes referred to as server consolidation, is the concept of one physical computer servicing several applications and allowing each to use the same underlying hardware without interference with one another. Virtualization allows for different applications to have sufficient hardware resources - central processor units, memory and I/O, the essential physical resources to run an application. Virtualization also lets you host multiple operating systems on the same hardware. The general idea is analogous to time sharing – each application has shared use of the hardware.

 

Source:  YouTube Server Virtulization

Virtualization is the perfect solution for applications that are meant for small- to medium-scale usage. Virtualization reduced power consumption and need for cooling.While the power consumption and heat output of a system with high levels of utilization will be greater than that of a system under a lesser load, the consolidation of multiple low-load systems should still produce less heat and demand less power over all. Data centers are finding it increasingly more difficult to keep up with demand for power at the rack and the cooling demand which comes with increased power consumption.

 

Figure 3 Sever Virtualization

Source: VMWare.com

Figure 4:

Virtualizing Servers Can Cut Energy & Capital Costs

Source: BC Hydro

Reference:

George Ou ( May 22, 2006) Introduction to server virtualization from http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6074941.html

Jonathan Strickland How Server Virtualization Works from http://communication.howstuffworks.com/server-virtualization.htm

Jamie Johnson(November 12, 2008) Server Virtualization Simplified from http://www.greenittools.com/article/server-virtualization-simplified

Cloud computing's green benefits

The term cloud, or cloud computing, used as a metaphor for the internet, is based on an infrastructure and business model whereby - rather than being stored on your own device - data, entertainment, news and other products and services are delivered to your device, in real time, from the internet. The creation of the cloud has been a boon both to the companies hosting it and to consumers who now need nothing but a personal computer and internet access to fulfill most of their computing needs.

Google is perhaps the most famous cloud-based company to demonstrate the potential of a cloud platform to drive a hugely successful business model. All of Google’s signature products - Gmail, Google Documents and Google Earth - are delivered from the cloud. Its ambitious project to create a digital library will be entirely hosted by servers storing most of the world’s published work, all in digitized form.


The cloud is growing at a time when climate change and reducing emissions from energy use is of paramount concern. With the growth of the cloud, however, comes an increasing demand for energy.
For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data centers - massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts of energy.


Facebook , for example, commissioned a new data centre in Oregon in January 2010 and committed to a power service provider agreement with PacificCorp, a utility that gets the majority of its energy from coal-fired power stations, the United States’ largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Facebook’s decision to build its own highly-efficient data center in Oregon is not considered to be “Green” as it simply working to maximize output from the cheapest and dirtiest energy source available.

One of the tenets of cloud computing is that you use what you need and you pay for what you use. Amazon S3 and Simple DB and Google App Engine all charge based on storage, bandwidth, and CPU time. Additionally, these services run on shared infrastructure, so you don't have separate physical boxes serving your traffic. This allows Amazon and Google to run at high utilization knowing that—statistically—not all of their users will be hammering the service at once.

To learn how to move your company to cloud computing go to the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042703357.html

Reference:


Cindy Waxer(August, 2009)  The Benefits of Cloud Computing from http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/features/cloud-computing-benefits/


Cloud Computing WIKI ANALYSIS from http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Cloud_Computing

Allentown(June 29, 2009) Cloud computing in Facebook for business from http://www.examiner.com/x-13401-Allentown-Social-Media-Examiner~y2009m6d29-Cloud-computing-in-Facebook-for-business

Energy-efficient data centers

Reducing the environmental footprint of our data centers starts with reducing their electricity consumption. More and more cloud-computing companies are pursuing design and sitting strategies that can reduce the energy consumption of their data centers, primarily as a cost containment measure.

Yahoo is building a $150 million US dollar data center near Buffalo, New York, which will be completed in May 2010. The site was chosen in part due to the low cooling costs expected in the region and the ability to use fresh air cooling, as well as the ready access to low carbon and low-cost hydro power.

                                 
Source: http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/01/for-truly-green-it-we-need-truly-clean-data-centers/


The New York Power Authority has approved 10 megawatts of low-cost hydro power for a first phase of construction for a Yahoo! facility. A second phase, expected in the spring of 2012, would receive an additional five megawatts of power.

 Figure 5: Cloud-Based Data Center Expansion

Source: Greenpeace International

Google Energy, a subsidiary of cloud leader Google, applied and was recently approved as a regulated wholesale buyer and seller of electricity in the United States, giving it greater flexibility as to where it buys its electricity to power its data centers.

Reference:

Katie Fehrenbacher(April 26, 2010) Yahoo Thinks Outside the Coop for Green Data Centers from http://cleanenergysector.com/2010/04/yahoo-thinks-outside-the-coop-for-green-data-centers/


Pedro Hernandez (Febuary 19, 2010) Facebook’s Coal-Powered Problem from http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/02/facebooks-coal-powered-problem/


Efficent Data Center by Google Inc. http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/step2.html

Profit from green computing

How can the financial services community not only benefit, but financially profit from it?

At the heart of Green Computing is reuse. IT refurbishment is the implementation of Green Computing in commercial practice. Now before you start thinking of dusty old servers that have fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere in the east end of London, think again. IT refurbishment is essentially ‘gently used’ hardware and communications technology that has been cleaned, tested, repackaged, and in some cases had parts replaced, to restore it to a quality condition. The standard of refurbishment is so high that in most cases, manufacturers will recertify it. In short, IT refurbishment enables you to literally increase the yield and useful life of your company’s IT investment and improve overall IT asset manageability. Fulfilment of legal requirements and corporate social responsibility, combined with recognition of asset value and bottom line revenue is fueling reuse and refurbishment.


Another method to profit is avoiding forced upgrades and extend the life of your existing systems.  Every manufacturer will update their operating system or hardware at one point or another, often pushing upgrades long before the equipment has reached the end of its life, and in many cases long before you, the customer, are ready to migrate. In some instances, manufacturers can’t or won’t supply the required equipment in your existing infrastructure.

For example, you may have six servers and require a seventh one, however, the manufacturer tells you it is only possible to get the latest version of that server with a new and different specification and a newer version of the operating system. This disrupts the homogeneity of your existing environment, forcing you to upgrade before you’re ready. Refurbished IT enables you to custom order quality refurbished equipment at price points that just aren’t available elsewhere, as well as sell (yes, sell for money) your outgoing existing equipment for profit.

On the buy side, this could be equipment you want to purchase that is designated for tasks which don’t require the very latest hardware, such as development, testing, maintenance, building resources such as a call centre or back up system, or simply to make an addition a n existing homogenized infrastructure. Just because the manufacturer no longer supports a particular platform doesn’t mean it’s old. You might have purchased it just six months ago. Being ‘lifecycle aware’ enables you to break the cycle of vendor lock in, yet still access the best brands with full assurance and reliability.

Likewise, companies simply do not need to buy the brand new latest 64 bit system optimised for the most up-to-date processes. There are only a handful of mission critical applications that will require the very latest specification. The vast majority of applications do not. These include: ‘Just in Case’ and Near Line storage, databases that need to be maintained for compliance purposes, software development and proof of concept testing, data centres, enterprise applications and essentially anywhere the business doesn’t require the absolute latest computing power.

Reference:


Green Computing from http://www.squidoo.com/green-pc


Clean up your computing http://www.squidoo.com/Green-Computing

Anuradha Shukla(December 1,2009) Going Green is Profitable from http://www.biztechreport.com/story/311-going-green-profitable

Realities and Myths of Green Computing

The green revolution has taken the world by storm and being ecologically friendly is now a very big business. Computer technology has evolved significantly as a result, with dozens of companies now touting low energy, environmentally friendly alternatives to the power hungry devices of years past. One thing being lost in the midst of this cacophony of sales pitches however, is the fact that new, ecologically friendly computers can actually be more harmful to the environment and cost more energy than their old, used, predecessors.


Myth 1: Being ‘Paperless’ Means Being Green


Reality: This is perhaps the most widespread myth that most people fail to comprehend. The term ‘paperless office’ was used with the advent of web-centric offices and it was believed that by dumping physical use of paper, businesses and people were actually making a contribution to the cause of the environment. Folks who are harping about the paper-free advantages of the computing environment fail to realize that in the current scenario, the use of computers is actually increasing the demands on the ecosystem.


The reason lies in the increasing energy demands that are being created due to computerized environments. To a normal PC user, it isn't very apparent, but the fact is that PCs tend to heat-up the environment in a workplace. As a result, more energy-sapping solutions are being sought in the form of installations such as heaving air-conditioning devices at workplaces. 
Alternatives


There are simple methods of developing a PC environment that actually reduces the consumption of power and is greener:
• Purchase computers that are Energy Star–compliant — this is just one of the many certifications that can differentiate authentic, low power-consuming systems from the rest
• Use flat-screen monitors that use substantially lesser energy than CRTs. Similarly, laptop models are known to use lesser energy than the conventional desktop models
• Use darker backgrounds on the screen as they use slightly lesser power than brighter displays
• Try to read/review documents and e-mails rather than printing them


Myth 2: You Have To Buy New To Be Green


Perhaps the absolute most valuable thing a person can do to make their computer more energy efficient is to simply turn it off. The days where it was said to leave the computer on at night have passed and the vast majority of computer technicians now say to turn a computer off when not in use. At the very least, a user should set the power management settings to allow the computer to go into the low power sleep mode after twenty or thirty minutes of inactivity. Another incredibly simple way to save energy is to simply turn off the power bar after turning off the computer. Most computers, monitors, printers, and other devices still draw small amounts of power even when turned off. Either turn off the master switch or purchase an energy aware power strip.

Reference:

Preetam Kaushik( Oct. 6, 2009) Myths and Realities of Green Computing retrieved April 21, 2010 from http://www.brighthub.com/environment/green-computing/articles/31882.aspx

CCiswell (May 21, 2008) Green Computing: Myths and Realities retrieved April 21, 2010 from http://www.lestout.com/article/news-society/the-green-channel/green-computer-myths-and-realities.html


Nancy Weil (August 3,2007) The realities of green computing from PC World

Responsible Disposal of e-waste

Though businesses often pay a great deal of attention to their environmental footprint and to the performance impact of IT assets when they are in use, relatively little attention is paid to the environmental impact of IT assets after their useful life has come to an end. Given the alarming environmental impact of e-waste, this inattention is a potential public relations liability and a mistake for companies that care about protecting the environment. E-waste represents over 90% of the long-lived toxic material disposed of by a typical white collar firm (see figure 6 below). Unregulated and improper e-waste recycling has been linked to massive fish die-offs and other ecological catastrophes.

Figure 6 e-waste analysis

Source: EEP Analysis

So where does the tons of e-waste end up? According to New York Time(December 9, 2007), "Most e-waste ends up being shipped abroad to developing nations, where unprotected workers are exposed to a machine's toxic guts while they extract reusable parts. what cannot be salvaged is often dumped in or near water sources, a practice that enviromental groups say has contributed to polluted soil and drinking water for poor popuplations."  And researchs shows that unregulated e-waste recycling in the developing world is an environmental and human health disaster. 

The video below will give you more details about the impact of dumping e-waste to developing countries:

       Source: Dumping on the poor from YouTube

E-waste not shipped to the developing world is typically discarded in landfills. Newsweek notes that: “Most consumers will eventually send their old, obsolete gear to landfills, where decaying circuit boards and PC screens could leak toxic substances like mercury, lead, and chromium.”

So what is “Responsible Disposal”?

Responsible disposal of e-waste assures:

• IT assets are put to their highest and best use to lighten the burden on the environment
• Toxics in e-waste never go to the developing world to harm the environment

How to participate:
There are a variety of programs associated with electronics recycling and e-waste disposal:


Mobile Phones


In most instances, your mobile phone company should be able to recycle your old phone for you at no charge. As noted above, in California, cell phone companies are required by law to perform this service.


There are also a number of non-profit and for profit organizations that will recycle your old cell phone. For example, the 911 Cell Phone Bank works with law enforcement agencies and associations to provide free 911 capable cell phones. According to the organization, they donate roughly 1,500 phones per month.


Computers and Peripheral Hardware


Most major computer hardware retailers, like Apple, HP, IBM, Gateway and Dell, have some kind of "product take-back" program in place. For a small fee (in most cases), owners can send their old hardware back to the manufacturer for processing, recycling and disposal. Other retailers, like Office Depot, may offer free electronics recycling on designated dates.


There are also a number of charitable, non-profit and for-profit organizations that accept old computers for recycling. In some cases, giving away old electronics may even be characterized as a charitable donation with positive tax consequences for the donor, so hang onto those recipts from the receiving organization.

Reference:

The recycling and disposal of electrical and electronic waste in China—legislative and market responses. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 25 459–471.

Recycling: tech trash, e-waste: from Business Week (December 13, 2005)

Time to deal with e-Waste The New York Times (December, 9, 2007)

Andrew Zangilli(March, 2008) Responsible e-waste disposal from http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Sep/20/10271.html

Conclusion

Green Computing is not only a new trend; it is a technology of itself. The move to become more environmentally friendly is more than just a means to a better corporate image; it is also a means to cost reduction in an ever inflating IT budget. New and improved ways of using this technology seem to appear everyday. The important key to remember is that while all of these technologies are beneficial in some way, the most beneficial to existing corporations are those that directly affect their processes and IT infrastructures. Reducing the number of servers using virtualization is a great way to consolidate but in order to get the maximum benefit the corporation must reorganize its datacenter infrastructure and in addition, rethink processes and procedures that utilize these resources from the user’s stand point.


In order to utilize the new IT technology, an individual needs to be aware of the products they are buying. Paying attention to things like the energy star rating along with the general components of a computer can help to greatly reduce the amount of electricity used on a day to day basis. Replacing old equipment with new and more efficient equipment is only effective if the efficiency difference is high and the old equipment can be recycled or reused instead of simply ending up in a landfill.


Switching over to green technology doesn't have to be a sudden and unnerving step for authorities. ‘Being Green’ should be understood as a long-term commitment that solves the purpose of creating a greener and sustainable infrastructure. Many organizations have already started displaying figures of the amount of money they have saved in a calendar year by adopting practical, greener methods. Organizations which are new to ‘Being Green’ should seek the help of such successful models to establish a list of measures that are most appropriate for their respective.

Reference:
Benson, Laurie. “Visions: One company’s approach to green best practices.” Wisconsin


Green Tech.  GreenerComputing 24 Jan 2008. from http:// www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=36576


GreenerComputing 1 Feb 2008. from http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=36613