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National

City

Building

Individual

FIGURE 5-2 The decision-making pyramid shows how decisions of an individual can get bigger and bigger.

As you can tell, information generated at the top of the pyramid is policy oriented.
Output at the bottom level of the pyramid at action oriented.
Let’s take a closer look at how this works, in practice. Table 5-1 illustrates what happens
when an issue—in this case, the reduction of CO emissions—is handled at each level of the
2
pyramid.

Steps
So far in this book—and in chapters to come—we’ve explained how your IT department can
conserve energy, but that’s not the only place you can make changes. Energy conservation is
also a consideration in the non-IT parts of an organization. Keeping green encompasses
such issues as water conservation, recycling, and so forth. Let’s talk about some of the ways
you can be environmentally responsible in the non-IT portions of your organization.
Water
Water use can be a big consideration in your organization. How much of a consideration will
vary, depending on how much water you use. For instance, if you’re in an office building in
a downtown location, you don’t have to water the grass. On the other hand, if you are in a
campus with lots of lush lawn between your buildings, water usage will be a lot higher.
The following are some tips to keep your water usage under control:
• Document your maintenance and upgrades to fixtures.
• Monitor your water usage. Keep a log of meter reads on a weekly basis so that
spikes in usage can be assessed and repairs made in a timely fashion.