Green IT

"Going Green" has now become a huge phenomenon, and has made a significant impact on companies and industries world wide. Many companies use green solutions to help represent their brand name as being more energy efficient, other companies go green to just create less waste and scrap, which it most cases leads to creating more profit. Many people when you mention going green, you think of recycling and usually plastics such as bottles and cans, well now as the "green revolution" has grown in finding what we can do with recycling or becoming more energy efficient, computers and IT have been able to tap into ways they can conserve power and become more energy efficient. Some of the ways that IT can become more green are by creating more energy efficient chips and disk drives, also you can switch large personal computers for more thin energy efficient ones, and to help even more you can power all computer equiptment from a renewable energy resource. The government has also help in making it a point to create more green IT processes by regulating laws and helping enforce standards that go along with the green initiative. Many computer companies have done research to find the most helpful way to go green, one that they came upon was to make the life of the computer longer. By creating a more durable and more energy efficient computer the life expectancy of the computer would go up because it would not have to work as hard to do all the functions. Manufacturing new computers has a huge ecological footprint, how they are using IT to help this situation is by giving the opportunity for upgrades in computer, keeping the same computer, but upgrading or buying new RAM which has a far less ecological footprint. There are larger ways as well that IT has made an impact in the green world that many people overlook. By using IT you are able to cut out a large amount of paper usage. Using IT such as online banking, email, chats, and other forms of communication, you are able to cut out a majority of your typical paper usage. Overall, I believe there is a lot more to come from the IT green movement, I think this is something that many companies and industries are going to put as their main focus. It is profitable, and helps the environment, and I know many people overlook ways that IT has created green solutions, but I know personally I am going to look for them and try to take full advantage.