Go green, get greenbacks

Going Green is a red hot status symbol. But when market conditions are tight

and cash flow is a daily wrestle, thinking green may not come naturally.

Awareness of green initiatives is on the upswing but not high enough. And if

going green is seen as a lot of work it is likely to be put off. That is where

the good news helps. Going green also means saving greenbacks.

For years and years, we have used-rather misused-the planet's resources,

leaving future generations precious little. To make it worse what is left would

be a polluted and messy waste with hard-to-remove hazardous ingredients. For

those who think it's all baloney, here's some stuff to digest. Oil was created

by nature over thousands of years. Mankind is running through it in a matter of

decades. Technology is meant to make life efficient. It does that. It also

leaves e-waste. Old computers, monitors, cellphones, etc-stuff we have no use

for anymore. According to an Assocham report, e-waste is growing at 20 percent

annually in India. In Delhi region alone, which includes Gurgaon, the rate is 40

percent! By 2012, Delhi would have produced 6 lakh metric tons of e-waste. Huge

quantities of lead, barium, phosphorus and other heavy metals, which are known

to be carcinogenic, are being released into the environment. Landfills, where

e-waste is usually dumped, cause leaching of chemicals like mercury, lead and

cadmium into the soil and groundwater sources.

SHYAM MALHOTRA

According to the Go Green Initiative in the US for schools to go green,

recycling a ton of paper saves 7,000 gallons of water, 380 gallons of oil and

enough electricity to power a household for six months. US's environmental

action group, Natural Resources Defense Council, says that the

virgin-timber-based paper industry is the leading consumer as well as polluter

of freshwater in industrialized countries. It also destroys millions of acres of

forest habitat.

So if the environment can be given more years while saving costs it is

something to get excited about. NRDC reports that an Environmental Protection

Agency office made concerted efforts to cut down on printing, and went on to

save $49,000 a year and reduce paper consumption by 30 percent. By simply going

back to basics. Cutting down printing on paper. Switching to double-side

printing in draft mode. Doesn't sound too much to ask for-does it?

Similarly, electricity and airconditioning costs can be brought down. When

people troop to the cafeteria, how many of them switch off monitors? A CRT

monitor uses 75W of power. Half hour of lunch multiplied by number of monitors

by 75W...can you see savings yet? How about a rule which says that if you are

going to be away for more than one hour, switch off the PC? How about the same

for lights, printers and scanners and ACs when not in use? The idea is to make

each person in the company aware of these, so it becomes an obvious thing to do.

Cut down on air travel. Going to New York from Mumbai and back would produce

close to 7,000 pounds of CO2. How much of collective travel does your team do?

Cut down on the carbon emissions, and get huge savings. Work will continue

through webcasts, online collaborations, audio conferencing and email.

For IT companies, data centers are turning green. New approaches to data

center designs are bringing down energy costs. Sun's modular approach to design

has seen some significant savings, according to their blueprint released in June

this year. In their Bangalore data center, Sun was able to reduce space

consumption by more than half, and power consumption by


17 percent.

So going green is not just about saving the environment. It is about saving

the wallet too.

The author is editor-in-chief of CyberMedia, the publisher of


The DQ Week. He can be reached at

shyamm@cybermedia.co.in