Greg Galitzine : Green Blog
Greg Galitzine
| Helping environmentally-conscientious business leaders choose environmentally-friendly solutions.

April 2009

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Now If Only Lexmark Made More Of Its Cartridges Refill-Friendly...

April 24, 2009

You would never hear a car maker say 'drive less' or a cookware firm recommend eating raw food to save the planet. Nor would one expect a printer manufacturer suggest that its customers print less or don't buy their goods if they don't need to.

Yet that is what Lexmark, in a remarkable display of corporate responsibility has done in via research and advice, reported on TMCnet.

Among its suggestions are:

Earth Day Message: Take Meaningful Steps

April 22, 2009

The Earth is our home, folks, and there isn't exactly another piece of real estate like it in the galactic neighborhood, so let's not try to make in uninhabitable by our own hands.

Here are some meaningful steps we can take:

* Go hosted. Buying and accessing centrally managed solutions uses less hardware hence less e-waste and are more energy-efficient than purchasing and installing separate units on premises.

Kudos to the ITU, Now The Next Green Challenge: Wired Versus Wireless

April 17, 2009

Kudos to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for its work in developing methodologies to examine the environmental impacts and the benefits of IT communications (ICT).
 
The ITU is developing tools to calculate energy usage and carbon impact arising from ICT lifecycles and to examine the decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can be achieved with ICTs. Examples of the latter include substituting ICT services and devices for intensive fossil-fueled activities for travel and transport and by replacing atoms with bits (buying an MP3 file instead of a CD), also known as 'dematerialization'. 

The organization also noted a trend towards 'always-on' devices that are a drain on power supplies. On the other hand a contribution to its focus group meeting showed that direct e-mail has the effect of a 98.5 per cent carbon dioxide emission reduction compared with paper. 

"A common methodology will help establish the business case to go green and can ultimately be beneficial to informed consumer choices and climate-friendly business procurement," say Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.

Now what's needed is for the ITU or another similar august body to tackle a real interesting and probably the next green issue: wired versus wireless, both in the actual energy to push X amount of data (including voice) from A to B, and in construction and lifecycle construction and maintenance impacts.







Answers to this matter can help decisionmakers, and green-and-energy-conscious businesses and individuals to make the right choices.

As Tesla discovered, air is a lousy conductor of electricity, not to mention the safety concerns.

Wanted: A 'GreenDex

April 14, 2009

There have been plenty to the point of overload of competing green claims--that some times amount to greenwash--regarding the apparent and supposed environmental benefits of buildings, products, features, technologies, services, and practices: from LEED buildings to telework.

At the same time there have been points raised about the costs both direct and indirect i.e. lost productivity of going green: at what price to organizations especially in this tough economy with limited resources.

To help organizations, decisionmakers, and yes journalists and the public, could some reputable association develop with consensus from all parties: industry, academia, government, environmental groups devise an objective 'GreenDex' to evaluate products, services, applications and practices to help us reduce our environmental footprints?

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