General Motors (GM) is making progress toward its aggressive sustainability goals to use some 125 megawatts of renewable energy annually within its energy portfolio by 2020.
16 megawatts (12% of the goal) is being generated at one GM facility: the Hamtramck, Michigan. Piped steam from waste-to-energy (WTE) plant, owned by Detroit Renewable Power (DRP), is being used to power heating and cooling systems in the GM plant as well as for some process operations. This energy, produced from renewable municipal solid waste (MSW), is helping GM achieve the goal and act sustainability !
Greenpeace, CEED (Centre for Environment and Energy Development) and BASIX (a livelihood promotional institute), took the challenge to revolutionize the lives of people in a small village in Bihar, Dharnai by bringing in electricity through Decentralized Renewable Energy System (DRES).
Greenpeace along with other partners set-up micro-grids throughout the village using solar panels to generate electricity that is clean, efficient and and cost effective. The system of solar micro-grids have been designed and installed based on the specific electricity needs of the area and provide electricity to over 450 households, 50 commercial establishments along with 60 streetlights, two schools, one health center and one Kisan Training Center.
The solar micro-grid was set up with an initial capacity of 100 KW electricity generation to cater to the basic energy requirements of the village, and it can be further expanded to meet the advanced needs of the community if required.
The grid has not only provided electricity but also added economic and social value to the lives of the people. The village has set an example for the entire country that energy self sufficiency is not a far fetched dream.
After focusing on reducing its energy consumption for several years, Jordan Vineyard & Winery installed 1,932-panels generating enough power to offset the family-owned and operated winery’s utility bill by 99% and save nearly $4.9 million in electricity costs over the next 30 years.
Three questions that will make you a GREEN citizen
Is your organization interested in
reducing its carbon footprint?
If YES, have you quantified the
impact that printing has on the environment?
Are you aware of potential energy
savings by managing printing efficiently?
If you have the intention to be green but don’t know how to do
all this, read the post!
What is printing?
Printing is not only about sending a file to the printer and collecting it from the printer, it includes
the cost of managing and optimizing the input, output and the processes that
support these printers. In a real life business environment it includes paper,
printer, technical services, ink toner and power. If we add up the cost of all
this it is about 15% of a company’s annual spending. Which means you are spending more and depleting more!
So what is the solution?
MPS – Managed Print Services.
As per the Managed Print Services Association, Managed
Print Services is the
active management and optimization of document output devices and related
business processes.
The definition is
very broad, but the end result is easy to comprehend, it enables your
organization to efficiently use the infrastructure, monitor and standardize
printing management, and improve workflows as required by automating document
management. From a sustainability point of view, which is why the post in on this blog, it helps organization reduce
the carbon footprint of printing by reducing energy consumption and paper
usage, and simplifying recycling and end-of-use disposal of devices and
cartridges.
Managed Print
Services has helped companies achieve:
Cost reductions associated to printing system of up to 30%
Energy savings associated with
printing system of 30% to 80%
Reductions in paper consumption by
millions of pages for companies
Environmental friendly disposal of
assets and recycling strategies for devices at end of use
Easy, consistent, and responsible
recycling of toner and ink cartridges with a trustedrecycling partner
Decreases in their carbon footprint
from printing
Efficiency and productivity
improvements
Convert the slow
manual paper based approval processes to electronic saving paper and time
Increase the
security of the documents by tools such as follow your print.
This implies that it is a win-win
situation for everyone, on one hand the business saves money and optimizes its resources
and on the other its reduces carbon foot print by consuming less power, paper
and other supplies.
There are many companies that offer managed
printing services some of the big names in the industry are Xerox, HP and
Cannon. Have a look at the video below from Xerox to understand the service
better. Keep reading the blog for more GREEN IT solutions!
As the name suggests, Green IT revolves
around making the world green by paying attention to 3Es – Efficiency, Energy and Environment
in the field of Information Technology. It is all about increasing efficiency,
reducing energy consumption and saving the environment. We are surrounded by
and use information technology every minute of our daily life, which gives us ample
opportunity to be responsible citizen of the planet by doing small but
impactful things that can save the planet.
Just for the statistics, data centers across the globe used 235.5 BkWh units of electricity in 2012, therefore a small increase
in efficiency can save enough energy to light up many cities across the globe.
Why Should We Care?
We live, eat and sleep IT. IT is in our
homes, schools, offices everywhere and anywhere we can think of. From
manufacturing, using to disposing of IT resources, all of them involve the three E
mentioned above. We use natural resource to manufacture them, energy to use
them and then deplete environment by not properly disposing them. In the
process of utilizing the technology most consumers and businesses waste
resources, in the form of energy, paper, money and time. These resources can be
invested to increase efficiency, reduce energy, save the environment and allow us to become green citizens. Therefore even if you are not a tree hugger, it makes good
business sense to paint your IT environment and culture GREEN .
The planet has limited resources which are being consumed at a very fast pace, it’s time that we stop and think about what we can do using technology to save our home planet, fortunately,
there are many simple steps we can take to accomplish this. It does not matter if you
are a single consumer or a small business, or an IT beginner or an IT wizard each of us has the chance to contribute, make a change and save the
planet !
To know these solutions and improve your
Green IT knowledge keep reading our Blog !
