As we approach Earth Day 2008 (April 22), companies are increasingly striving to prove their green “street cred.”

 

Internet fax service provider MyFax, is enticing office fax users to get rid of their old fax machines by donating them to charitable organizations such as Throwplace.com, E-cycling Central and others.

 

In return, MyFax will grant a free three-month Internet faxing subscription upon proof of receipt that the old fax machines have been properly disposed of.

 

 

Tandberg Data has announced a new program called Rebates for Recycling, a “green” initiative that helps IT managers save money as they help save the planet by reducing energy consumption.

 

Called Rebates for Recycling, the program provides incentives from $50 to $600 for those who sign up to recycle old, inefficient tape storage devices and replace them with new, high-efficiency tape storage products.

 

The offer is valid through June 30, 2008 and offers a variety of green discounts, starting with $150 toward the purchase of any Tandberg Data StorageLoader and $300 toward the purchase of any Tandberg Data tape library.

 

Existing customers of select Tandberg Data or Exabyte legacy products are getting a bigger incentive to purchase new energy efficient solutions with twice the discount: up to $600 on any Tandberg Data tape library.

 

In the data center market, the need for green technology solutions to reduce energy consumption is rapidly becoming imperative. That’s according to executives who gathered for a panel Wednesday during Computerworld’s Storage Networking World conference.

 

Going green is no longer just a matter of moral rightness or social responsibility, Computerworld reported. It is now becoming a business necessity for data center operations to know how much energy each device consumes and to find ways of reducing that energy consumption. It simply costs too much to not do so.

 

“If you use more energy [than presently] and it's more expensive, expect your costs to go up,” said Andrew Fanara, team leader for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star Product Specifications Development Group. “These problems will intensify.”

 

Last month, Computerworld reported, the EPA said it is working on a benchmark to help IT managers compare their own energy usage with that of other data center operations. A server specification should be complete by year’s end, with a green storage benchmark (in development by the Storage Networking Industry Association) expected even sooner.

If your company has an extra $5,000 or so in its green technology budget, it might be worth considering a device the converts trash into energy with very minimal emissions. The device is called “the Gigapit,” and is made by startup Data Centigrade, Inc.

 

The Gigapit is small enough (the size of a small trash bin) to be installed in an office, where it works to turn trash into business-class energy, ByteandSwitch.com said in a Tuesday report. The minimal smoke produced can be piped into the “air pleneum”above the drop ceiling present in most offices, or out an open window.

 

“Depending on the type of waste being burned, a typical company can reduce its data center power bill by 20 to 40 percent in the first year,” ByeandSwitch.com quoted Data Centigrade’s CEO, Guy Montag, as saying. Fuel efficiency depends on what’s being burned, he added: "Paper isn't great. Food works a lot better. Pizza, burritos, pies — any of your pastry- or dough-based comestibles. Basically you just throw it all in there and ‘flame on!’”

 

If green technology is your thing (and it must be if you’re reading this blog), take note: later this month more than 400 executives from data centers and IT organizations will descend on Orland, Florida for the Uptime Institute Symposium 2008 (theme: Green Enterprise Computing).

 

The goal of the event, schedule for April 27-30, is addressing operational and strategic challenges associated with developing energy-efficient systems for data centers. Industry benchmarks will be a key topic covered.

 

Keynoters will hail from some pretty big players in the IT space: Dell, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems, VMWare and APC. The event is sponsored (as the name suggests) by the Uptime Institute, a Santa Fe, California-based think-tank and advisory firm that focuses on computing reliability and energy efficiency. 

For more about the event, click here.