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IT Sector Best Practices

Articles and links containing best practice information for information technology generally. These best practices are the foundation for innovation, sources for identifying new jobs and career skills and ultiately greening of the sector value chain.



Apple and the Environment

By Matt Klein

Ever since Greenpeace rated Apple’s environmental record very poorly some years ago, Apple’s commitment to the environment has evolved quite a bit. I see thousands of Apple boxes pass through our warehouse every month, and it seems with each product introduction the packaging gets smaller and smaller.

The unibody laptops are packaged in a redesigned box with much less foam and are double boxed in recycled corrugated cardboard with recycled packing material. Just two years ago, Apple’s laptop boxes were nearly twice the size of the computers themselves and had lots of unused space. Printed manuals with each device approached 100 pages, but documentation is almost exclusively provided online or through Mac OS X. New high-capacity, long-lasting batteries have proven to be extremely reliable, and will significantly reduce the need for battery disposal.

Each Apple product now has an environmental report available here: http://www.apple.com/environment/reports/

Apple also maintains a blog on the environment here: http://www.apple.com/environment/news/
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White Paper: Best Practices in Green IT

With advanced technologies and sustainable practices, you no longer need to choose between profit and the planet

Download the FICO Insights white paper Best Practices in Green IT

While it's gaining tremendous momentum, true corporate sustainability still has a long way to go. Many "green" businesses rely heavily on buying offsets to reduce their carbon footprints. These days, we can do more.

FICO has leveraged leading-edge technologies and sustainable practices to achieve real “green”—both bottom-line and environmental. This white paper, bylined by FICO CIO Christopher Rence, provides insight into best practices, and highlights the technologies that helped FICO:

  • Reduce IT energy consumption by 33%; on track to reach 50% by 2010
  • Reduce paper consumption by 50%
  • Realize $740,000 in operational savings
  • Improve overall data center performance

Watch a video of FICO CIO Christopher Rence discussing how IT can cut costs and carbon footprints at the same time.

Visit the FICOTechTalkChannel on YouTube to view more videos on Green IT and Corporate
Social Responsibility.
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Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability
By Deborah Fleischer
Published December 07, 2009

Website: Green Impact

The latest in our series of GreenBiz Reports, researched and written by Deborah Fleischer, the president of Green Impact, explores and outlines the 10 best practices for bringing all your employees on board with your company's sustainability projects.

From the executive summary of the report:

Green teams are self‐organized, grassroots and cross‐functional groups of employees who voluntarilycome together to educate, inspire and empower employees around sustainability. They identify andimplement specific solutions to help their organization operate in a more environmentally sustainable fashion. Most green teams initially focus on greening operations at the office, addressing such issues as recycling in the office, composting food waste, reducing the use of disposable take‐out containers and eliminating plastic water bottles.

http://greenercomputing.com/research/report/2009/12/03/green-teams-engaging-employees-sustainability