Green Options » microsoft

BSR 2009 - Biodegradable Lanyards and Microsoft Sustainability

Keith Rockmael — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:04:05 +0000

Ah, it feels good to have the BSR conference back in San Francisco. Even though the economy has gone to hell, it is good see that probably close to 1000 attendees hit the conference so the sour economy has not killed the whole notion of notion of sustainability and companies.

Good start — as we walked in and registered the staff handed me a recyclable, biodegradable, compostable lanyard.

The theme for this year’s conference - Sustainability in a Reset World

After admiring our lanyards and breakfast we jumped into packed conversation with Pamela Passman of Microsoft. Of course we considered today’s launch of Windows 7.

The discussion centered on the sustainability of Microsoft. Now, most people will admit that the technology business isn’t the least sustainable or “dirtiest” business. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t press a heavy carbon footprint. Passman discussed that companies need software to track their own carbon footprint.Microsoft may have many ideas for other comanies but they need to look in the mirror as well.

She admitted the two most pressing issues that Microsoft needs to improve in so far as reducing their carbon footprint that includes:

1- Traveling (lots of it)

2 – Data centers — The data centers continue to be electric and water intensive.
Microsoft claims to be attempting reduce the footprint of these data centers.

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Community Colleges: Disappearing Shop Classes and Green Technology

Fred Etcheverry — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:39:31 +0000

In my last post, “Soulcraft and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The Demise of Shop Classes,” I discussed Matthew B. Crawford’s recent book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, in which he examines the consequences of the disappearance of high school shop.

Crawford acknowledges that community colleges to some extent are able to “salvage” the lack of high school shop. This is certainly true as you may read in my post, “Green Technology at Your Community College.” CCs are providing an essential service to the workforce. Government studies show that the highest paying jobs, especially green jobs, will come from the CCs. ( Jessica Milano and Conor McKay at the Democratic Leadership Council. San Jose Mercury News.)

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Autodesk helps cities track their carbon emissions

Reenita Malhotra — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:53:04 +0000

Last week, at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in Seoul, Autodesk, Inc., a world leader in 2D and 3D design and engineering software, announced that it will collaborate with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and the Microsoft Corporation, to provide visualization technology for Project Two Degrees. Project Two Degrees is an Internet-based application that provides cities with a set of tools to measure, compare, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at a local level.

Autodesk joins forces with the Clinton Foundation to build sustainable cities

Autodesk will provide the technology, initially based on Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, that will act as the model-based visualization environment used to view, evaluate and compare the results of analysis and monitoring in the C40 city. Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise software is a powerful mapping solution for delivering information more quickly, easily, and cost-effectively via the web.

Green Building Elements had a chance to speak with Brett Smith of Autodesk and Olivia Ross of the Clinton Foundation. Here is what they had to say.

GBE: How does the software track emissions?

Brett Smith (Autodesk): The Project 2° Emissions Tracker is designed to measure as many municipal and corporate activities as possible. Users enter data on emission producing activities such as fuel and electricity consumption, vehicle traffic, waste production, industrial processes and air and sea vessel fuel use. The software then converts the data into greenhouse gases, including tons of CO2 equivalent, taking into consideration the source and type of activity.

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Microsoft Looks to Cut Carbon Footprint 30% by 2012

Alex Felsinger — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:44:44 +0000

Microsoft has announced plans to make both their headquarters and their products more environmentally sound.

With energy-conservation, use of renewable energy, improved data center design, and reduction in air travel, the company plans to reduce their carbon emissions by 30 percent compared to 2007 levels by 2012.

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Obama Feeling Smart (Grid) About Supporters

Alan Smith — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:00:18 +0000

When Does an Interest Start Being “Special”?

After years of railing against special interests, I find myself presented with a quandary. Special interests are lining up behind the Smart Grid technology I love and, in doing so, risk saddling this cool program with the baggage intrinsic to special interests.

Even as lawmakers spent yesterday grilling everyone from members of the DOE to representatives from Google about Smart Grids, the groundwork for a Smart Grid might already have been assumed. And, no, I’m not talking power lines and sub stations, I’m talking political donations.

The Current System is… Old. Very Old

It’s a fact: our current system for transporting, producing and storing energy is ancient and inefficient. Plus, as has been well recorded here on Red Green and Blue, Smart Grid technology theoretically does amazing things for how we use power as a nation and maybe even how we think about consumption. By using less energy during peak hours, and even allowing personal rigs to feed back into the electricity grid with ease, the technology refocuses the country on conservation.

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News from the Microsoft Futurists: A Cool Montage and Video of Visions of Clean Technology in 2019

Lucille Chi — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:33:01 +0000

Microsoft presents it’s vision of the year 2019, and I’m so pleased to see some thinking on the green tech side, as I’ve tried to capture in the screen-stills below. Ten years is not too far out, and some of these ideas are fun. For example:

* Connected classrooms where learners share a lesson in natural systems
* Smart home energy monitoring
* Better ecological awareness (through cataloging and intuitive access)
* Urban green roofs

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Can the World’s Worst CD and DVD Manufacturer Do Better with Solar Energy?

Matthew Phelan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:44:35 +0000

Sun Well Solar—a subsidiary of the notoriously poor CD and DVD manufacturer, CMC Magnetics—has announced today that it is one month ahead of schedule in the ramp-up of its new photovoltaic production line.

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Microsoft Goes the Way of Apple: A New PC Retail Store Experience

Reenita Malhotra — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:46:15 +0000

It’s official. Microsoft has announced its latest ‘Me-too’ venture to emulate its rival Apple: a PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide through the development and opening of the company’s own retail stores.

David Porter, corporate vice president of Retail Stores, Microsoft.

Microsoft has hired David Porter to lead this effort. Porter was Vice President and general merchandise manager at DreamWorks Animation in 2007. Prior to this, he spent 25 years at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in roles of increasing responsibility and seniority in store operations, merchandising and information technology.

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Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics: Nokia Leads the Pack, Nintendo Falls Flat

Ariel Schwartz — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:47:35 +0000

It’s that time of year again—Greenpeace has released the 9th edition of The Guide to Greener Electronics. The guide scores companies based on a set of criteria for chemicals, e-waste, and energy.

This year, Nokia regained its first place crown with a rating of 7 out of 10 points. The company performed well in a variety of areas— it has an excellent take-back policy in India, and all new products since 2005 are vinyl-plastic (PVC) free. Additionally, all models released after 2009 will be free of brominated flame retardants (BFR) and antimony trioxide.

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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.

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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.

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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.