future directions

Becoming a Green Office is as easy as A B C  

Several years ago I attended a seminar on the paperless office. It was a fascinating presentation and I was really taken by what could be done to become more sustainable in the ways that we operate while significantly reducing our environmental footprint. However, as most of the audience were thinking about what steps we could take to eliminate paper, one wag at the back of the room called out “you stand as much chance of having a paperless office as having a paperless loo!” As I visit businesses today to conduct environmental reviews and audits, I can’t fail to see that our joker in the pack’s prediction is sadly still very much the norm. Many offices today are not maximising on the use of modern technology and are still using  inefficient and energy consuming IT in their day to day operations and don’t stop to think what steps they can take to green their office. It doesn’t matter what the size of the office is, there are significant benefits to running a Green Office. Some of these include;

  1. An energy efficient office helps reduce waste and reduces pollution.
  2. Introducing energy efficient IT such as Virtual servers can save as much as 80% on energy consumption costs and bring other valuable efficiency savings
  3. By reducing waste you save money. Waste includes the electricity, heat and water that you don’t need to use!
  4. Reductions in your CO2 emissions by using less electricity and changing to a green power supplier.
  5. By switching off office equipment when not being used significantly reduces your power consumption.
  6. Eliminating or reducing your paper consumption not only saves money, it saves trees as well. If you have to print, print double sided copies, it reduces your paper consumption by half. How much do you spend on paper and printer inks alone each year?
  7. Involve everyone and you and your team will feel good about helping to reduce costs, waste and Green House Gas Emissions.
  8. Having one over on your competitors and being a more attractive choice in the supply chain.
  Becoming a green office sounds a no brainer, so why are so few offices doing it? The standard office I see has the usual desks complete with in/out tray, adjacent filing cabinets and printing facility, and a room dedicated to the storage of servers, the purpose of which for most employees is shrouded in mystery and where few staff venture!. This is what we generally expect an office to be like. But could it be different? If we don’t experience any different examples of office life, is it likely that we will change our attitude to the way that we can work? Well one business I worked with recently was the exact opposite of the norm. There was not a printer, filing cabinet or piece of paper in sight. Glo Networks is a technology company, providing IT business support and consultancy. From the outset of establishing the business the Managing Director made a commitment that the company would operate paperless offices and this is built in to the corporate behaviour for all employees. Any incoming paper documents are scanned and shredded within an hour of receipt. Occasionally they have to send paper documents out as some organisations still refuse to accept digital documents, but in any one year they still use less than one ream of paper. The majority of their cash transactions are carried out using digital banking and every customer is encouraged to do likewise. But the commitment doesn’t stop there. The business measures its energy and water consumption and works hard to eliminate waste. Its recent environmental review highlighted its commitment when working with their clients to encourage an environmental approach. This is reflected in their newly adopted Environmental Policy. They want to be seen as a model for others to follow and in doing so are encouraging their clients to adopt a green approach. In carrying out their recent environmental review, I asked their MD Chris Connor how they encourage their clients to go green he said, “When we’ve chatted to customers about being greener they’ve never been that interested. I suppose it’s still an emerging thought process that many managers / owners haven’t appreciated yet. However when we have explained the real benefits to them which include lower energy bills, reduced costs, more efficient use of technology and the more effective use of office space they are keen to embrace the Green IT concept. For example, we’ve just carried out a project to remove six physical servers from a customer’s premises and replace them with two rented, hosted server in a UK data centre. They’re saving money, getting a faster system, saving office space and cutting down on their energy consumption by as much as 80%.”Chris Connor is quick to point out that operating a Green IT policy involves a variety of energy saving as well as money saving initiatives. “When we deploy desktop PCs for our clients we ensure that power-saving features, such as turning off the monitor and powering down the hard disks, are turned on. If only more businesses would commission an environmental review they would be able to see how they could improve their energy and environmental performance and reduce their costs.In addition, we ensure that everything we do with the machines that we dispose of is compliant with the WEEE directive; we also have a green purchasing policy and are working closely with our hardware providers to provide greener products. We only replace equipment with new technology that has a smaller footprint and is compliant with the Energy Star standard”.

By far the most dramatic impact of greener IT for businesses is the use of IT virtualisation.

Virtualisation enables multiple operating systems to run on a single server. Server virtualisation improves IT asset utilisation and creates a resilient IT infrastructure that can quickly adapt to a company’s IT requirements. A typical room housing standard servers and storage facilities would require a data centre 10 times the size of a virtual server. By creating a virtualised environment savings of typically around 80% can be achieved. The average server in operation within a business operates at only ten percent of its processing capacity, while using 80% of its maximum power. Virtualisation reduces this inefficiency, as multiple virtual servers can run on a single piece of hardware. As a result, a business implementing a virtual server can operate at a fraction of the same power usage, heat production and floor space of single application servers. It provides a cost-effective and efficient method of conserving energy and space.Another significant IT development over recent years is the introduction of Remote Working. This provides enormous benefits to a company whilst at the same time providing tremendous environmental benefits by reducing traffic congestion, fuel bills and office space requirements. In addition remote working has shown to be a great tool for recruiting and retention can reduce absenteeism and even curb stress-related illnesses. Many companies with remote employees report that they work an average of an hour more per day. And when disaster strikes whether its snow or ash clouds and staff are stuck at home or in the Caribbean they can still carry on working regardless ensuring sales are not lost and no detrimental impact on customer service is experienced.In conducting the environmental review of this IT business I was impressed by the way the consideration of their impact on the environment was central to all their work practices and reflected in corporate behaviour. It was very clear that they had adopted an attitude that in everything that they did, they wanted to minimise their impact on the environment and in doing so this was reflected in their corporate behaviour. This behaviour is extended to their commitment to assist their clients to take those first steps in recognising that an environmental approach can reduce waste and save money.   Reducing our use of paper in the office is only the tip of the iceberg. The real savings to businesses come from a sea change in our attitude to the way that we work and deploy IT equipment in the office. This does require a commitment from managers/owners to review their environmental and energy performance. For many businesses this will require a change in office behaviour and the way we work, but when weighed up with the significant environmental and economic benefits it has to be a win-win situation. Who else is prepared to join with the growing number of businesses who have made the commitment to change their office behaviour and attitude to making a “greener” office a success?  

Chris Gledhill

Director

Future Directions