Little Miss Enviro Geek : eWaste

Some personal news...

biwirth — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Hello Dear Blog Readers,

(hmmm....that kinda sounds like the beginning of one of those SPAM emails)

I wanted to let you all know I am moving on from Microsoft and shall no longer be blogging here. I'll be moving an archive of these posts to my website http://www.greenitstrategy.com and shall continue blogging there on Green IT.

So what will I be doing now?

Well, I have decided to take some time off, write a book and maybe look into starting my own business. Regardless, you can always catch me through my website and please do feel free to visit me there.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me with their Green IT questions over the past two years and gave me feedback. I really appreciate your support and good luck with your own Green IT initiatives.

Kind Regards,

Bianca AKA Little Miss Enviro Geek

Are digital downloads really more 'Green' than CDs?

biwirth — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:18:00 GMT

At first when you ask yourself this one, you kind of go - of course! Think about all that packaging & shipping! But then you kind of go: wait a sec - those digital downloads are hosted in big, power-hungry data centres. Microsoft recently undertook a study where they invited in the Natural Resource Defence Council to review their analysis on this very topic. And the result was that digital downloads ARE more environmentally friendly.

A couple of the key stats from this report are:

Digital download of Office (a nice chunky sized download that one!) avoided 8 times the amount of carbon compared to shipping & producing a DVD;
Carbon emissions avoided through online purchasing of 10 million copies is equivalent to:
- the electric consumption of 7,715 US households, or
- 13,008 passengers cars driven in one year, or
- 231 acres of avoided Amazon rainforest deforestation.

Checkout the full paper here: http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/go-green/

Talking Green IT @ DigiGirlz in North Carolina

biwirth — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:28:00 GMT

Today I presented on “Environmentally Sustainable IT” at the Microsoft DigiGirlz camp...two months ago I had no idea that Microsoft even ran this type of conference!

DigiGirlz is essentially a high tech camp for high school girls in the US and Sweden. I presented at the Charlotte, North Carolina event to about 110 students over 4 sessions. It was pretty cool - we never had anything like this for girls in high school when I was there (which was not that long ago – luckily one of the girls pointed out 30 is not old – phew!).

Anyway, I started off telling the audience about how I got into IT (fell into it), then explained some of the environmental issues IT is faced with today. The top 10 below are adapted from the book ‘Green to Gold’ by Esty & Winston:

Then I went on to talk about Waste Management:

- Over 130 million computers are being sold around the world today. Where the hell are these old computers going? Check out www.ban.org to view some pics on where the are going! Hardware manufacture initiatives on modular computers (for easier recycling) and recycling programs (like Microsoft MAR) help avoid these outcomes.

- The manufacture of a single computers takes the following resources (see http://www.unu.edu/zef/publications-d/flyer.pdf):

o 240kg / 528 pounds fossil fuels – more than 10 times the weight of the computer

o 22kg / 48.4 pounds chemicals

o 1500kg / 3300 pounds water

Massive!

I’ll talk about the rest of my presentation in future posts...or check out my session at Microsoft TechEd Australia this year... J

So at the start of this presentation I prepared myself for the fact that most of these 15/16/17 year old girls are not going to care about Green IT – but I told myself that if I encourage just 1 girl to be interested, then it would have been worthwhile – I am definitely an optimist J And it happened! In the last session of the day, one of the girls came up to me and asked why I do Green IT (she was concerned recently watching the whaling and polar bear issues). I told her about growing up on a farm and wanting to be a Park Ranger but not getting the marks from school (ahhh...slight rebel!). But I saw it physically ‘click’ with her when I told her I wrote a petition at school, went around the community to collect signatures for a local recycling program and sent it to my local council. She thought it was a fantastic idea for her own school and I hope she pursues it. As I have said in a previous post, I think sometimes the smallest wins are the best...

CDs bogging down your IT Dept? Go Digital...

biwirth — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:32:00 GMT

Even if you aren’t interested in the so-called concept of ‘saving the planet’, there is one thing you can do to help your IT department better manage your Microsoft software repository. When I was in an internal IT department we seemed to experience what I called "CD/DVD FEAST or FAMINE"! We would either receive a ‘tonne’ of CDs and end up throwing most out or have to find somewhere to store them (in our already cramped space!); or alternately we would spend ages trying to FIND a CD with the right software and the right volume licensing key!

To help with both the environmental and operational issues, Microsoft has introduced the concept of ‘Digital by Choice’ – which is essentially opting to have your Microsoft software downloadable via the central licensing site rather than sent out via CD/DVD, once your purchase order is processed by your LAR. This is pretty efficient as you can give access to those that require access to the software, and restrict it from those that don’t, and you get the software faster!

This program is available for any customer on a volume licensing program but for the meantime is limited to a set of pilot countries until 22nd August: US, Canada, UK, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia. However for those of you outside these countries the program will be available from September - not too long to wait. Today there are very few Australian’s on this program (c’mon Aussies!).

To enable the program you just need to click on the 'Digital By Choice' icon in your Volume Licensing website:

Step 1...Click on the 'Digital By Choice' logo

Step 2... Click the link 'Join Digital by Choice NOW' to email your details to the licensing team

And if you ever want to disable the program, you can opt out at any time and start receiving CD/DVDs again.