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196 P a r t I V : C a s e S t u d i e s

FIGURE 9-9 Visitors can chat with Rackspace representatives on the company’s website.

“We want it to be green, but we have to balance it with business needs,” said Enright.
“We’re also considering LEED certification. We’re doing things on a lot of different fronts.”

Supply Chain
Rackspace is looking beyond its walls to be environmentally responsible, and is trying to
pull in their supply chain partners and whoever else they deal with.
“After Green Day, we started thinking about how we can reduce, reuse, and recycle,”
said Enright. “Then employees started thinking about relationships with vendors.”
The company had already done away with paper manuals and then they started talking
to server vendors about packaging. As a result, when possible, multiple servers are
consolidated into a single package for shipment.
In 2007, Rackspace joined other environmentally conscious tech companies to be part of
the Green Grid. The group is a consortium that advocates for ecologically responsible
technology, and also serves as a knowledge clearinghouse for its members.
“The outcome is you have regular conversations about what they’re all doing,” said
Enright. “It’s better working together than working in isolation.”
The rush to environmental responsibility is motivated by the desire to be responsible,
but that desire is driven by business.
“It is market-driven,” said Enright. “Datacenters are in short supply and you need to be
able to fit more into the datacenter. For the suppliers, it’s a competitive fear. If they don’t do
it, someone else will come in and do it.”

Technology companies make a huge impact on the environment—both in what they make
and how they make it. But the heads of many of these companies aren’t evil villains,
twirling their mustaches while they poison the planet. Although they still make an impact
on the planet, they are trying to do what they can to minimize the effects. In the next
chapter, we’ll take a closer look at what some other, non-IT companies are doing to green
their operations.