The following is an excerpt from a paper that I recently wrote for a sustainability management course. This project took on an interesting path as I started to research and review the most relevant thinking in this area. Many students and professional might choose to focus on alternative energy innovations and the efforts to change an organizations processes an practices around material consumptions. These are very important and very relevant, but I thought that one of the most interesting areas to explore was around high-tech, information and communication efforts. I plan to cover some of these topics in the next few weeks by including pieces of my past research and simultaneouslybuilding on these concepts to incorporate the continuously evolving "best-thinking" by industry experts and top researchers. Especially important to this conversation is the understanding and recognition of cloud computing as the next frontier to maximizing business performance, while fullfilling press need to build and develop more sustainable enterprises .
12/2010 Paper - Excerpt from: "Sustainability Problems and Potential Solutions in Information and Communication Technology".
As I have been progressing through this great course in sustainability management, it is clear that there are many outstanding issues and problems that are yet to be fully understood and/or solved. Central to many efforts around sustainability are measures taken to change the effect that a given process or system has on the environment. Much of the current research and literature focuses on the growing problems that exist in terms of energy use and the consumption of scarce natural resources. This is the central problem that we face in the efforts to achieve true sustainability. The consequences of inaction are well documented and better understood than most closely related topics. However, smart energy technologies can sometimes overshadow some of the more granular topics that occupy an important space in the sustainability domain.
Some of the efforts being made to address areas of un-sustainability ironically prove to be unintended contributors to the problems that they set out to solve. In this paper, I plan to delve into some of those areas and talk not only about the problems that exist, but also really try to focus on the solutions being developed and utilized. Specifically, I want to concentration on the sustainability efforts being made in the information and communication technology arena. This is a fairly broad area to consider, so I will be focusing the majority of this paper on one main hardware issue/problem and one main software solution.
On the hardware side, I think that it would be unfortunate if I don’t cover some of the current issues that are emerging around electronic waste. This is a topic that is producing many short-term problems and consequences as well as prompting some well-deserved concern about the long-term consequences of not dealing with this issue. What are the main arguments that exist here? I will also mention a potential solution to most of these problems and highlight a retailer that is working to deliver smarter ways to recycle and reuse discarded electronic components.
On the solution and software side of things, I want to spend some time learning about virtualization, cloud computing, and other innovations that are being developed to improve overall business efficiencies around data and information. Beyond that, many of the changes and transformations are occurring due to the strong mandate that businesses have to cut their total energy consumption and slash their overall carbon footprints. That is the large question that we will begin to wrestle with; can the move to new, more flexible data storage and services provision strategies help lessen the net carbon footprint of businesses in the information age? This is a somewhat complex question, but there have been some interesting studies completed that set out to frame the question properly, understand the scope of the solutions, and measure actual and projected results. Rather than diving too deeply into the merits of the studies or the methodologies upon which the data was collected and/or analyzed, we will look to focus on synthesizing and extracting the most important knowledge and theories being developed.
We know that technology represents an important tool in the battle to transform our business world into a truly sustainable space. However, the terms and ideas associated with technological sustainability are sometimes more loosely used than one would prefer, and therefore it is important to be clear about what technology you are referencing and understand both the intended meaning and the generally accepted interpretation or association that the technology has. Balancing the desire to innovate in the name of solving tough sustainability problems, with the need to do it in a responsible way is where the real art is. Yes, providing employees with laptops or PCs to make them more mobile and more efficient is important, but what about the physical components of the products that are considered to be unusable or simply out of mode? What are the true effects of an across the board hardware refresh that moves everyone in the organization to a new high definition monitor with the newest state-of-the-art sound system? Where does the old hardware and material end up, and why should we care about these types of questions?
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