Money talks when it comes to energy efficiency, but when will e-waste be on the top of the green-IT agenda?

Tags: carbon footprint, dumping e-waste to developing countries, E-waste from USA, e-waste; Greenpeace, energy efficency, Green IT, Green IT Expo, ICT products, TCO Certified

Report from London Green IT Expo

My colleague Susanna and I went to London Green IT Expo, which took place on November 10-11th. We had expected to see some interesting innovations and hear some good discussions regarding green IT.
To some extend our expectations were met:  There were a lot about energy efficiency and efforts to increase the carbon foot print.

But there were surprisingly very little about e-waste and recycling of ICT-products at Green IT Expo.
Research director Andy Lawrence from The 451 Group, held a presentation about the coming trends within green IT for the next five years.  All of the trends he presented were about energy efficiency and none about how the industry and the users should act on decreasing the problems with e-waste.
But there was one exception: Catalina McGregor from Green ICT Delivery, HM Government’s CIO/CTO Council held an interesting presentation on the topic: Dirty ICT: What it is? And How Do You Clean Up Your Act. Ms McGregor showed some videoclips from Greenpeace that illustrated the huge problems e-waste from the so called developed countries are dumping in the third world. See video from Greenpeace:  one from India and one from Ghana

The messages from these films are that the best way to decrease the problems with hazardous substanses from e-waste is to don’t have these substances in the ICT products at all. TCO Certified is working in this direction by having criteria on  minimized levels of hazardous substances and that the products must be repaired for recycling.  The goal is to ban all hazardous substances. Another thing you can do to decreasing problems with e-waste is to buy a product with good performance that has a long life time, so you will keep your product longer.

It is definitely time for the richer countries to make some significant efforts when it comes to e-waste.  In 2009 no people in the world should be exposed for hazardous and toxic substances as led, mercury and cadmium etcetera. And it is also about time that e-waste will have a bigger share of the Green IT concept.

If you would like to know more about the e-waste from USA, see this film

Green London?

Tags: Green IT, Green IT Expo, Sustainable Computing

Green IT is or will be an issue in London, because in November London City is the host for the conference Green IT Expo, http://greenitexpo.com . The topics will cover Sustainable Computing for Responsible Business, and this is one of the reasons why I’m visiting London for three days.

So when I arrived monday morning at London Heathrow and the “new” terminal 5, I started to think about all the electronic devices that is in use every day for 24 hours at this huge airport. How much energy is used for that?  Did they consider all the environmental aspects when building terminal 5?  Did they consider sustainable computing and responsible business? And was Green IT at the agenda and taking into consideration? How much can be improved when it comes to energy use and environmental aspects?  Well I will have to find out! Maybe you know? If you do, please write me some information about it, or where I can find some.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day, meeting with manufacturers outside of London. I will travel by train from Euston Station. If you have ever been to London, you know how crowded it is in the mornings when everybody is hurrying to work. With a latte in their right or left hand taking the railway services and the underground, the logistics is fascinating to think about, it works and everybody knows more or less exactly how to avoid, bumping into each other. So what do you think?  Will Green IT become an issue for all of them? Will London succeed with their goal to more sustainable computing for responsible businesses. Yes, I think they will! Why, because achieving that is easy, compared to all the logistics they have to do to make the train services work out every day.