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The Greening of IT
82 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

Examples of IT companies practicing what they preach abound. In
January 2008, Salesforce.com announced an initiative to “offset its carbon
footprint”—that is, compensate for the 19,700 tons of carbon emissions cre-
ated by everything from its data centers consumption to employee travel.
That effort includes a partnership with Native Energy, a Native American-
owned company involved in renewable energy projects, with $126,000
invested in five projects to develop alternative energy sources, including
windmill and methane farms. Sun created a Sun Eco office a year ago to over-
see all the company’s green programs, including telecommuting as well as
core products such as low-power servers. Sun is touting its Project
Blackbox—a data center in a shipping container—as not just portable but
also 20 percent more energy efficient than today’s data centers.
Cisco also pulled most of its green initiatives under one umbrella, the Eco
Board. Its efforts include using its own high-end videoconferencing and
other IP tools to cut company travel by 20 percent a year—2 million miles—
which the company estimates will lower its CO2 emissions by 10 percent, or
72,000 tons. Cisco also is working with the cities of San Francisco, Seoul, and
Amsterdam to find ways to reduce CO2 through broadband and other net-
ptg
working technologies that support telework.
In February 2008, Dell launched “Plant a Tree for Me,” through which
consumers pay an extra $2 for a laptop or $6 for a desktop to plant trees
aimed at offsetting the equivalent computer emissions. It launched
www.dell.com/earth to tout its green policies. HP says it has offered recy-
cling since 1987, and today lets consumers send back equipment from HP or
competitors. It keeps products such as old Digital Equipment VAX and
AlphaServer machines available for parts, for instance. HP set a goal in 2004
to take back 1 billion pounds of product for recycling by 2007 and made its
target.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
The three “Rs”—Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle—have become the mantra
for the environmentally conscious. For many IT vendors, recycling those
old servers replaced by new virtual servers has become a significant part of
the green data center process. Reusing and recycling is a big part of the
overall green revolution. A few years ago, the old PCs and other IT equip-
ment at IBM were often sent to third-world countries. That doesn’t happen
anymore, and companies such as IBM pride themselves on recycling more