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Friday, July 13, 2007

How big is your businesses carbon footprint?

Most of us are now doing our little bit at home for the environment. An increasing number of us recycle and make sure that our appliances are switched off, rather than left on standby, before we go to bed. The more committed eco warriors are even installing solar power, wind turbines and zero carbon footprint heating systems.

The more aware I have become of my carbon footprint, the more I have started to wonder about the carbon footprint here at our office. So I decided to take a quick look into it. After a quick tally heres what I found.

We have just under 20 staff here in our air conditioned offices and probably about 30 PCs running all day (I also discovered that a good number of our team leave their computers on overnight for convenience) we a have a server room with 6 great big servers, an array of other hardware and a big air conditioning unit whirring away 24/7/365. By now I am actually feeling guilty! To top it, during the winter months the radiators are keeping our corridors nice and cosy 8 hours a day!

Now, a sobering thought. According to a report carried out by campaign group Green Technology Initiative, A small server costs more to power during its lifecycle than it costs to purchase! Hmm, so with our 15 computers going 24 hours a day, that's a cost of £15,000 circa over the course of 3 years, not to mention the carbon footprint that's being left behind!

Some further research revealed lots of fascinating information;

• IT accounts for two percent of global CO2 emissions - the same as aviation (source Gartner)
• Office equipment is the fastest-growing area of business energy consumption - 20% per year.
• Turning off PCs at evenings and weekends can cut running costs by more than two thirds
• 50% of companies do not ask staff to switch off office equipment when they leave (source: Npower survey)

Source: Computing Magazine's seven steps to green computing

So, it's clear as an owner manager of a small business my lack of carbon footprint strategy means that I probably have a carbon footprint many times higher than a domestic user. It's also clear that by making some simple changes at work, such as ensuring that hardware including air conditioning units are turned off over night, will do more to reduce my own carbon footprint than any amount of recycling or cycling come to that! And last but not least, this will be saving the business a very considerable amount of money!

If you haven't looked into your businesses carbon footprint, then you should!

posted by James Stratton

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