A "Green" New Year’s Resolution for IT Staff

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A "Green" New Year’s Resolution for IT Staff

12/17/2003

By Terry Calhoun

Earlier this week, I and some colleagues met with a University of Michigan task force to talk about what kinds of performance indicators the university should define, measure, and periodically report regarding its progress toward being a more sustainable institution. Preparing for that meeting has got me thinking, once again, about what a shame it is that IT folks don't more often think about sustainability issues and the contributions they could make.

There are in fact lots of things IT staff can do to assist their institutions with sustainability goals, some easy and short-term, others longer term but worth thinking about. I've listed a few here, not necessarily the most important ones, but some of the easier ones to do. Why not make it a new year's resolution that you will do two of the easy things and also spend some time at least thinking about a tougher, more complicated issue? At the end of my column this week, I've got a technology tip to help you make your New Year's pledge sustainable! (Look for the sentence in bold typeface.)

First, a brief answer to "What is sustainability, anyway?" In its simplest form, it is ensuring that access to environmental, social, and economic resources are shared fairly and not wasted. An important part of sustainability is that the "shared fairly" part includes not just us modern humans, but the generations which will follow us. Most people think of "green" buildings or recycling and re-use initiatives when they hear "sustainability," and that is an important part of it, but the concept is broader than just the physical environment. The concept of "ecological footprint" is a powerful one. The average such footprint of an American reveals that it takes about 24 acres of good land to support one of us. Since there are only 4.5 such acres per person, worldwide, it would take about 6 planet Earths to support our lifestyle for all living humans. This very quick, interactive online tool will help you measure your own ecological footprint.

When you think about the social and economic resources part of sustainability, you are thinking about issues such as the "Digital Divide" and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to name just a couple of areas that affect us in our daily work. IT folks tend already to think and work collaboratively; there is greater egalitarianism in IT departments than elsewhere and probably a narrower range of salaries (partly due to IT staff getting, in general, better pay than others, especially at the "bottom").

But the physical environment issues are the ones that feel most natural to IT staff, if for no other reason than that we're always trying to do more with less anyway, parsing away, although that sometimes trips us up in the long run (think Y2K). The easiest things you can do in 2004 to be more sustainable mostly involve the mantra, "recycle, reuse, and reduce." I'm going to ask you to chose one resolution from each of the next two groups as something to do, and then give you a more complicated issue that you don't have to do anything about, but think about it at least once a month.