GREEN OR BUST

Global legislation and concerned consumers are putting growing pressure on big corporates to do their business in an environmentally-friendly way.

For the ICT sector, this means issues of e-waste and power consumption must be addressed. While precise figures are difficult to track down, it`s generally agreed that tons of e-waste are polluting ground water around landfill sites, while unsustainably massive power demands are being made by ICT networks around the world.

Major corporates are collaborating on ways to make computing more energy- efficient, thus reducing their `carbon footprint` and its damage to the environment.

In South Africa, the government enacted the National Environmental Management Act in 1998. Under this legislation, companies face heavy fines and even jail sentences for polluting the environment. In addition, a new Waste Management Bill will also be gazetted next month, governing the disposal of electrical and electronic waste.

Going green

While oil companies and consumer goods manufacturers may appear to be the worst polluters, Gartner analysts estimate that the ICT sector is as bad a polluter of the environment as the aviation industry, contributing 2% of the world`s carbon dioxide emissions.

Gartner adds that if ICT companies want to remain competitive, they must pay close attention to their environmental strategy.

Global players are already sitting up and taking notice. One initiative to make computing more environmentally friendly is the Green Grid, a partnership of ICT players seeking to improve energy efficiency in the world`s data centres. Already, members include AMD, APC, Dell, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Cisco, QLogic, Fujitsu Siemens, BT and VMWare.

Dell also recently extended its commitment to developing the most energy-efficient products in the industry. IBM announced it was redirecting $1 billion per year across its businesses to dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in IT. It said its Project Big Green aimed to introduce new products and services for IBM and its clients to sharply reduce data centre energy consumption. IBM noted that analysts IDC said roughly 50 cents is spent on energy for every dollar of computer hardware. This is expected to increase by 54% to 71 cents over the next four years.

Verizon, which runs a wireless network serving 60 million customers and handling billions of calls each month, was able to save vast amounts of power and $20 million a month by cutting its data centre numbers from ten to three.

The EU paves legislation path

Of all the economic groupings, the European Union (EU) has been the most vociferous on all issues environmental. Its militancy on green ICT has led it to adopt two directives: the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, which makes the manufacturer responsible for collecting and disposing of electronic waste in an environmentally friendly manner, and the Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) directive, which seeks to restrict the usage of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphernal ether.

Manufacturers have scrambled to support the initiatives and tout their green products. Sceptics claim many of these green initiatives are merely clever `greenwashing` - appearing to be concerned about the environment to look good to consumers.

NIMBY

Sadly, one side-effect of growing consumer demand for new, green appliances and IT is that older goods containing harmful substances are tossed out to make way for the new ones.

With more developed countries reluctant to have this pollution on their turf, it`s claimed that many redundant and harmful products find their way to less developed nations.

In a recent thesis, Masters student Anahide Bondolfi from Switzerland`s University of Lausanne, documented cases where developed countries ship their e-waste to developing countries under the auspices of donations.

According to her research, this is the result of high costs of e-waste disposal in developed countries. She says because developing countries lack the legislative framework to deal with e-waste, disposing of it is less costly and less stringent than in developed countries and there are no real safety standards in place on handling e-waste. It is reported that 90% of the Western world`s e-waste ends up in China in family recycling workshops, where labourers disassemble the electronics manually for reclaimable materials. These labourers are not afforded proper protective gear.

Most chemicals found in this e-waste are documented to cause complications in humans, notably lung cancer, swelling of the brain and liver damage.

Polluting Africa

Africa is also becoming a popular e-dumping site. Bondolfi states that 75% of e-waste arriving in Lagos, Nigeria, is `junk`. Scavengers waylay containers laden with e-waste as they`re shipped into the country`s harbours, then dismantle and mine materials from the e-waste, exposing themselves to the harmful chemicals found in this equipment as they do so.

Bondolfi says e-waste can comprise up to 60% valuable metals such as gold, silver, platinum, steel, aluminium and copper, making scavenging well worth the risk.

Frans Dekker chief of landfills in the city of Tshwane, told delegates at the recent ITA/SANGONeT e-Waste Management conference in Johannesburg that there are no formal methods of disposing of e-waste in SA. An unknown amount of e-waste just gets housed in storage, he notes.

He says there is a large number of illegal dismantlers who mine for materials and illegally dump what parts are left. "Illegal dumping of e-waste parts still takes place after cherry picking. This causes harmful toxic chemicals to leech into our water supply," he says.

He adds the problem has grown worse as SA is fast running out of landfill sites. He says the sooner we rid our existing sites of e-waste, the better.

South Africa has started several initiatives to deal with e-waste thanks to efforts by the ITA, Pikitup and e-Waste Association of South Africa. However, Dekker says more aggressive awareness programmes are needed on the issue of e-waste.

Dekker says companies need to have internal policies for dealing with e-waste and says proper infrastructure and management is still needed from the government. In addition, public awareness of the problem needs to be increased, he says.

Back to the drawing board

At the same e-waste management conference, Keith Anderson, president of the Information Technology Association (ITA) and COO of Axiz, stressed that in order to tackle the issue of e-waste management it is important to design products for recycling.

Keep your cool

Besides e-waste, electronic goods and IT have other impacts on the environment. Neill Schreiber, country sales manager at APC-MGE SA, warns of the amount of energy that is needed to run EEE in the enterprise space as processing power increases: "Moore`s Law states that as processor performance doubles so too has power consumption and its side-effect, heat."

He says as technology improves companies will spend millions of rands on power to cool down equipment. The Data Centre Institute predicts that over the next five years, power failures and limits on power availability will halt data centre operations at more than 90% of companies.

Schreiber advises companies who want to reduce their energy consumption to look beyond the traditional room-oriented approach.

In this approach cold air passes through ducts on a data centre floor to cool the areas surrounding a bank of servers.

Because the air coming out of the vent mixes with much warmer air in the room, the cooling process draws a considerable amount of power.

He encourages the adoption of row-oriented cooling instead. In this approach, cold air is blown horizontally into the cold aisle at correct volumes and temperature, "This method is not only more efficient but also ensures that sufficient cool air reaches the front of the racks and enables cooling of up to 20kW per rack," he says.

Clamping down on polluters

The South African government has appointed `The Green Scorpions` to inspect and investigate suspected green offenders. Under the new National Environment Management Act, companies can be prosecuted for excessive emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG).

According to the new National Environmental Management Act, companies face heavy fines as well as jail sentences for those caught illegally dumping e-waste in landfills, as well as companies that have excessive GHG emissions. Offending companies could also have their trading licences revoked.

If the laws don`t scare manufacturers, consumer demand should. Growing awareness has swayed consumers - particularly those in developed nations - to insist on environmentally friendly products.

The writing`s on the wall, it would seem. ICT companies will need to go green or go bust.