Sustainable IT: Reducing Carbon Footprint and Materials Waste in the IT Environment

1. Drivers and Benefits of Sustainable IT: The aim of this lecture is to discuss the drivers and benefits of Sustainable IT, particularly for the customer. Drivers and benefits range through business, economic, environmental and legislative domains.
2. Product Service Systems and the Product Cycle: The aim of this lecture is to discuss product service systems, their barriers and lessons from past implementations, as well as the opportunities to reduce energy and materials consumption in packaging and equipment through end-of-life processing.
3. Client Equipment: The aim of this lecture is to discuss a four-step process for reducing energy consumption, materials consumption and materials toxicity in client equipment.
4. Data Centres and HP Case Study: The aim of this lecture is to discuss a seven-step process for reducing energy consumption in data centres and to present a Sustainable IT case study of IT vendor HP.
5. Roadmap and Success of Sustainable IT: The aim of this lecture is to discuss the strategies, activities and actions upon which customers and vendors should focus in order to successfully transition to, maintain and promote their Sustainable IT solutions at the organisation and industry level.
6. References: This document contains the full citations for the references in the Lecture documents.

Preliminaries

Text Book: In the preparation of any education program, and in particular an introductory course, it is a challenge to cover all possible questions or uncertainties that may arise during delivery of the material. In response to this challenge, this course is supported by the text book developed by our team, namely 'Hargroves, K. and Smith, M.H. (2005) The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century, Earthscan, London'. References and optional reading material is provided for each lecture for those who wish to explore the content in more detail.

Acknowledgements

>The Sustainable IT Lecture Series was produced by The Natural Edge Project using funds provided by Hewlett-Packard (HP) Australia. The development of this publication has been supported by the contribution of non-staff related on-costs and administrative support by the Centre for Environment and Systems Research (CESR) at Griffith University, under the supervision of Professor Bofu Yu, and both the Fenner School of Environment and Society and Engineering Department at the Australian National University, under the supervision of Professor Stephen Dovers.

Expert review and mentoring: Expert review and mentoring for the Sustainable IT Lecture Series has been received from Mike Dennis, The Australian National University; Scott Evans, Pitcher Partners Consultants and the Australian Information Industry Association; Bruce Scott, Griffith University; Chenobu Thong, Hewlett-Packard Australia; Michael Wagner, Hewlett-Packard Australia; Malcolm Wolski, Griffith University; and Tom Worthington, The Australian National University and the Australian Computer Society.

Citation: Stasinopoulos, P., Hargroves, K., Smith, M., Desha, C. and Hargroves, S. (2008) Sustainable IT: Reducing Carbon Footprint and Materials Waste in the IT Environment, The Natural Edge Project (TNEP), Australia.