What is sustainability?
According to UCLA Sustainability, sustainability is defined as: “the integration of environmental health, social equity, and economic vitality in order to create thriving, healthy, diverse and resilient communities for this generation and generations to come. The practice of sustainability recognizes how these issues are interconnected and requires a systems approach and an acknowledgment of complexity.” Thus, these practices support ecological, human, and economic health and vitality. Said in simple words, sustainability is about our future generations and the world that we will leave them. In simplest terms, sustainability is about our children and our grandchildren, and the world we will leave them.
Sustainability is changing the way we live by implementing a number of practices to save our environment, such as limiting our GHG emissions, changing how we do shopping or commute, reducing our reliance on certain energies, and more. As the awareness of sustainability increases, so do the efforts of businesses to include sustainability in their decision-making process. On the other hand, making your business sustainable doesn’t only affect the environment – it also cuts a significant percentage of your expenses related to IT infrastructure.
Research has shown that non-technology companies tend to waste more resources than technology companies in terms of technology, which is due to the fact that non-tech firms are less aware of the benefits of becoming sustainable. Companies might not benefit a lot from becoming sustainable, but doing good for the benefit of many is considerate.
How does IT affect resources?
Our awareness of the effect of IT on resources is not as vast as it should be. Working in IT includes using servers, and hardware that rely on constant energy sources, and significant emission of GHG. This can be seen especially when the devices are being built. 81% of the energy a computer requires over its lifetime is expended during the building phase. The energy consumption increases over time, as devices generate heat and additional energy is required to cool computing equipment.
How can you, as an IT company, invest in becoming sustainable and contribute to energy saving?
There are numerous ways to save energy for an energy-efficient company, starting from using energy-saving light bulbs to automating controls for lights and more. ⋮IWConnect has always been a sustainable brand paying special attention to energy saving, reducing air pollution, and even improving the environment by making it greener (donating and planting trees, cleaning parks etc.). Following are some of the practices that we have implemented so far:
- Relocating servers to minimize cooling and energy costs,
- Harness outside air cooling, and cooling to the minimum necessary,
- Automation of lights, security, and outdoor cooling controls,
- Migration to the cloud and using the cloud as cloud energy is more efficient,
- Replacing legacy systems and hardware with energy-efficient ones,
- Using public transport, bicycles, and scooters to go to work to reduce air pollution,
- Use sustainable materials in our new building – carbon flooring materials, energy-efficient cooling and heating, automation of lights and cooling/heating controls, and more,
- Setting computers to sleep: monitors turn off after 15 inactive minutes and hard disks after 5 minutes of inactivity,
- Sharing printers by using an internal network
- Working remotely 2 days per week
These are some of the practices that we have implemented so far to save energy, fight the energy crisis, and continue building our sustainable brand.
What about you?
Have you already implemented practices that improve sustainability and tackle energetic crises?
