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A "Green" New Year’s Resolution for IT Staff
12/17/2003
Easy Things Anyone Can Do (choose one to do):
[ ] Have staff provide their own, washable cups instead of providing cardboard,
plastic, or Styrofoam cups for coffee or water
[ ] Turn out the lights when you leave a restroom
[ ] Print on both sides of a sheet of paper when you can
[ ] Ride your bike to work more often
[ ] Park your car off campus and walk the last mile - it's good for your wellness
and fitness and you can probably largely avoid parking fees with just a 15-minute
walk
[ ] Recycle or re-use the tough cardboard boxes that computer equipment comes
in
Some Things That IT Staff Can Make Happen for a Bigger Impact (choose one to do):
[ ] Educate users about energy-saving software such as automatic "sleep"
features for monitors, and change the defaults on machines that you administer
to go to sleep more quickly
[ ] Make sure that printing stations you control have double-sided printing
enabled when it's a possible feature of the printer and its driver, and if you
make purchasing decisions, insist on that feature
[ ] Maintain a more accurate inventory of peripherals, cables, and other such
items so that you don't end up buying another one of something that's already
sitting in a closet corner somewhere
[ ] Get your institution to follow the crowd and move to less (or no) free printing
for students in computer labs
[ ] Ensure paper recycling bins are available in those computer labs, and that
someone actually recycles the paper
[ ] In larger computer labs, establish a policy for shutting down entire sections
during periods of low use - so you don't look in and see three students sitting
at machines in a 100-computer lab.
[ ] Think about (gasp!) assigning larger blocks of LAN storage space for students
to cut down on their need to use floppies, CDs, and zip discs.
[ ] Donate your time and expertise to the community, or maybe even to your college's
current sustainability initiatives - they might need your help running software
to report on environmental performance indicators
The Tough One (decide right now to think and learn about it at least once a month)
[ ] Think about: "How can we get more sustainable in the manufacture,
distribution,
use, re-use, and disposal of computer-related hardware?"
For every pound that a computer weighs, there are more than 2.5 times as much weight in waste from its manufacture; and almost a pound-for-pound equivalent of toxic waste. And we just use them up and throw them away. That's just not sustainable.
If you are of a certain age, you may remember, as I do, the days of changing your car's oil yourself and just pouring the use oil into the sewer or onto the ground. Not any more! A used-up battery, cell phone, or CPU is probably just as toxic as that used motor oil, and an awful lot of our used-up IT equipment is still getting dropped into dumpsters, and it then ends up in a landfill somewhere. As sure as it's now illegal to just throw out used motor oil, there are going to be changes in the manufacture of computing products and components - changes in materials, processes, and in the treatment of the people who do the manufacturing. Likewise, we're not going to be able to just throw them away much longer, at least without penalty.
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