Green Options » microsoft

Microsoft’s Green Initiatives – When Technology’s Top Players Go Green What Does it Mean?

mcmilker — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:21:11 +0000

Once consigned to reading tech magazines, green entrepreneurs in the tech space now are drifting to business sites - as it should be. More and more tech sites are covering business issues and more importantly, business sites, particularly those focused on green business are delving into the technology, particularly computer technology, fields.

Green entrepreneurs of every stripe face similar business challenges.

How to write a marketing plan.

How to handle inventory.

And in a tighter money era, how to find financing.

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Microsoft-Yahoo Merger, Greener Than Google?

Mark Seall — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:12:41 +0000

Just how green is the Internet? Going virtual has the potential to save significant amounts of energy, with a recent study predicting that Internet services could reduce carbon emissions by staggering 1 billion tons.

But look beyond the green hype, and the web has a dark secret - at the other end of your Internet cable, humming away, and hidden from sight, are thousands of energy hungry datacenters, running 24/7 and estimated to be using energy equivalent to all of the color televisions in the US. Worldwide datacenter energy usage has doubled since 2001 and is set to double again by 2011.

Google is today’s biggest datacenter operator, having more than twice the server capacity of any other firm in the world, but this could be set to change. The proposed merger of Microsoft and Yahoo would create a rival Internet giant with similarly huge capacity, creating new competition at many different levels.

Is ‘Paperless’ Really so Green?

Kristin Dispenza — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:40:56 +0000

It seems that journalism has become a pretty green profession.

Whether I am blogging or working for a more traditional media outlet, I can get almost any information I need simply by using the internet. So with a paperless home office, and no travel to speak of, just about the only ecological cost of doing business is the electricity that my computer uses… my computer, and, well, all of the servers that transport the e-mail, photos, and other data that I need.

How much electricity might that require, exactly? It turns out that our worldwide increase of internet-based data transmission relies upon a growing number of data centers, or Web server farms, as they are sometimes called. A single server farm consists of an enormous warehouse holding data storage systems and tens of thousands of smaller, state-of-the-art servers which process the information for all of our online activities. In recent years the construction of new data centers has increased dramatically, driven by the fact that most software applications will soon be delivered as online service products rather than via physical means (such as CD-ROMs). An article in Fortune magazine last year described the building boom of these server farms; a good single case study is the spate of data centers that have recently located along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

Daily Tip: Change the Margins, Save a Forest

Jennifer Lance — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:38:53 +0000

Green Options writer Maria Surma Manka suggested this simple tip she heard on NPR: change the margins of the documents you print, and save lots of paper. Smaller margins means more text per page with less wasted white space. The idea is simple: by switching the margins from the default 1" or 1.25" to .75" or less, we would us 4.75% less paper. This may not seem much for an individual, but according the NPR story, nationwide we would save 400 million dollars and a forest the size of Rhode Island!

The paper industry is one of the biggest environmental bad guys in big industry. According to NRDC,

"The pulp and paper industry may contribute to more global and local environmental problems than any other industry in the world. Paper manufacturers reach deep into species-rich forests for virgin timber, razing trees, polluting waterways and destroying precious wildlife habitat. Pulp and paper mills that use virgin timber are major generators of hazardous air pollutants, including dioxins and other cancer-causing chemicals. And the industry is the third largest industrial emitter of global warming pollution."

The average American uses 741 pounds of paper a year. We can reduce this excessive paper usage by narrowing the margins. Changethemargins.com is a campaign to do just this. The campaign’s goals are to:

Convince Microsoft to change the default margin settings in Microsoft Word to .75 on all sides. The more convenient it is for people to change their habits, the better chance there is that they will actually do so.
Persuade five corporations to officially sanction narrower margins for all company documents. In this way, people will get used to seeing documents with this formatting as the standard, as opposed to the exception. Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.
Challenge five universities to adopt narrower margin settings as the standard for their students and faculty, and include this information in their course guidelines.

Changethemargins.com has started a petition to Microsoft to change the default margins to .75" on all of its software, of which there is no technical reason for the current default settings of 1.25". It has been my experience that some printers do not like margins smaller than this, but you can experiment with your own printer to see how small you can make your margins. Here are some more astounding facts on paper from Changethemargins.com:

It takes 17 pulpwood market-sized trees and 390 gallons of oil to make a ton of paper
That ton of paper, when disposed of, takes up nearly 8 cubic feet of public landfill space.
That public landfill is approximately 36% waste paper products.
Each one million pages of paper not printed saves 85 pulp trees.
Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year — enough to build a 12 foot high wall of paper from New York to California.

There are other ways you can reduce your paper usage in the office. Use the print preview feature to be sure that there are no errors in formatting before printing. Furthermore, always print double-sided, or use scratch paper when possible. I am always shocked to find the majority of the paper in the bin at the recycling center has only been used on one side. The little things do add up! Even a fraction of an inch can save paper.

Tech Industry Goes Greener and Greener

Joshua S Hill — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:12:14 +0000

Each of us who are hoping for a greener future often take a particular interest in our own career path’s move towards a greener future. Automotive engineers push for greener workplaces and cleaner cars (both inside and out), politicians for… oh, bad example, and nerds like myself hope for our industry giants to take further steps towards that green, clean future.

Thankfully, I’ve picked the right team, as two of the giants of the technology world that are making great green steps in to the future.

First off is my personal favorite, Google, who seems to have a backroom that is just chock-full of hundred dollar bills. They’re dishing them our left, right and center to pay for lawsuits, acquisitions, and, as this latest story explains, green initiatives.

The nonprofit arm of the internet giant, Google.org, announced on Wednesday a $10 million request for proposal (RFP) from companies involved in commercial plug-in hybrid electric cars, as well as other sustainable forms of transportation (can you imagine how many bikes that would buy?).

The RFP process, which will take place entirely on the internet, hopes to accelerate the development of cleaner forms of transportation on a very large scale. According to Google.org, it is all in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing anywhere between $500,000 and $2 million in such companies.

Google.org is seeking companies with technologies, products and services that will accelerate widespread commercialization in the following fields:

• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)
• Electric vehicles (EVs)
• Vehicle-to-grid solutions (V2G)

"While $10 million is a fraction of the total investment needed to transform our transportation sector, we hope this RFP will help catalyze a broader response. We need the automakers to bring these cars to market, but plug-in vehicles also need an entire ecosystem of companies (to) flourish," Google said in a statement.

This isn’t Google’s only step in to the world of green technology. In fact, Google has been one of the corporate pioneers of taking those responsible first steps towards a greener future. In June, Google initiated RechargeIT, a program to convert company cars to plug-in hybrids. This technology not only recharges the car, but also allows the car to feed power back in to the grid at times of high demand.

Google has also installed their own 1.6-megawatt solar array, pledged $1 million to nonprofit groups working to address global warming, and given bikes to employees in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Google isn’t the only company taking green steps, though. Microsoft has added a new element to their portfolio: a regional bus system. Complete with built-in Wi-Fi, the shuttle service is built primarily for Microsoft employees, many of whom are situated in Redmond, Washington. The 14-bus Microsoft "Connector" system, to debut later this month, was announced as Microsoft expanding offices in Seattle’s South Lake Union and Pioneer Square neighborhoods.

Though the bus system will be able to handle no more than 1,000 of its 35,000 employees, it raises the issue, and adds new fuel to the fire, of comprehensive regional transportation reform. "This is something that the county bus system should be doing and they’re not," said Stephen Gerritson, executive director for Commuter Challenge, a Seattle non-profit. "To some extent, Metro is dropping the ball here."

This is a big move for Microsoft, and the right move at that. While undoubtedly expensive (Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith refused to name the price attached to this program) this investment will definitely improve Microsoft’s image worldwide.

Microsoft is not the only big name in the tech industry to offer bus rides to its employees, though: Google (again) offers about 150 bus runs daily across the San Francisco Bay Area, to and from its Mountain View, CA, campus, spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger said. "Part of the reason that we do it is because we really want people to have the opportunity to be able to work at Google in Mountain View and not feel like they’re contributing to environmental issues by commuting," she said.

Many companies, especially the big companies with employees numbering well in to the thousands, should be watching these moves by Google and Microsoft. As big as Microsoft and Google are, their influence does not range as widely as companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds and General Motors. While all of these companies have taken green steps, let’s hope that the tech giant’s announcements raise the bar for all large corporations.

News.com - Google offers $10 million to ’sustainable transportation’ firms

Google’s RFP

Google.org

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Microsoft giving workers free ride — with its own bus service

Mongabay - Business has to lead the Clean Up of the Enviroment

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