Discuss Agile > Greening of the Software and High Tech Industry

Digital Dumping Ground

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:12:13 +0000

Description

This was on PBS the other night. Incredibly shocking in and of itself. Then when you see that this isn't even the tip of the iceberg...no matter where your opinions lie with regard to not only the Greening of IT but to responsible environmentalism itself, scenes like this should scare you into thinking..."Are we too late?"

On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah.

Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students from the University of British Columbia have come here as part of a global investigation -- to track a shadowy industry that's causing big problems here and around the world.

Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home, a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them across a dead river to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie.

Agbogbloshie has become one of the world's digital dumping grounds, where the West's electronic waste, or e-waste, piles up -- hundreds of millions of tons of it each year.

Video Link

Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground

Microsoft Looks to Cut Carbon Footprint by 30% by 2012

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:10:46 +0000

web bookmark by Ryan

link

Clean Tech Journal March 2009

keywords

green campus, green products

notes

Includes link to their plans and the environmental dashboard in Dynamics. Flow the links a the bottom to the "2019" video at IstartedSomething - totally fun.

If I Were Mayor of Boulder......

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:16:28 +0000

Thread by amy_m

excerpt from elephant journal newsletter, a mindful Boulder publication - editor Waylon Lewis

In a recent Sunday magazine, the New York Times published the zillionth relatively superficial article about how in Boulder, Colorado—elephant's hometown—everyone bicycles, recycles and drinks lattés. The author referenced one of Boulder's many epithets: "25 square miles surrounded by reality."

I beg to differ. Boulder is 25 miles surrounded by largely tasteless sprawl, where once farmland and the Great Plains rolled. Reality is living in harmony with our earth. Reality is, as it’s said, that we human beings need the earth far more than it needs us. Reality is that global warming experts predict all coastal areas will be underwater within 50 years, and we're busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (a recent popular editorial criticizing the “green trend” said, “I need to commute 70 miles a day, I need to keep my various appliances plugged-in, and C.F.L.s interfere with my cell phone calls!”)

Secondly, we're hardly “the eco-capital of the world,” as the Times said. If we're the best the world's got, god help humanity.

Boulder is far, far from living in harmony with itself. We're a lush green town set in a desert, essentially. When you see a mile-wide plot of grass, such as at North Boulder or Scott Carpenter Parks, it's 'cause we water the thing night and day. We don't even have a friggin' recycle bin outside the North Boulder Rec Center (a LEEDS certified building). We don't offer recycling by the many trash cans on our historic Pearl St. Mall.

But we do a few things right: our Green Points program, also writ up in the recent conventional-paper-printed “Green” NY Times' Sunday Magazine, is more aggressive than national building-green certification programs. We're implementing a carbon tax. And now, our nationally-owned local paper reports, we're (finally, years after Halifax, where my ma lives) implementing a city-wide curbside composting program.

Did you know composting at home and at the office can reduce landfill waste by 85%? That's an awful lot of karma, nullifed. Yay!

If I were mayor of Boulder, I'd double our gas tax—unlike the pandering, B.S. plans floated by Senator McCain, and then Senator Clinton in recent weeks. I'd outlaw the watering of lawns during daylight hours, when up to 90% of water evaporates. My Buddhist barista would make all traffic lights powered by solar, and all city greenspaces would be xeriscaped. We'd start a Zip car and bike program, so folks could transport themselves zero-emissions-style. We'd legalize graywater systems. There's a lot of common sense stuff we could do, just as my Depression and WWII-era grandparents' generation did (Victory Gardens=Food Not Lawns).

A final note: recently, one of our main supporters and leaders in the green fashion movement went under. Our condolences. We have no idea why it happened—they say because they couldn't get sufficient additional investment in the current economy—but we agree that, as they say, it's an idea whose time has come, and we look forward to seeing another Nau emerge in the future.

Finally, finally: I'm expanding the next issue by 16 pages: so if you've never advertised in our pages, new advertisers can take a full page for half price, no commitment necessary—if you can get your ad to us by Thursday high noon. ~ Waylon Lewis, editor, Elephant magazine, Boulder, CO
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE3DF1239F933A05750C0A96E9C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Recycling Fair at Rally - Do it with a Local

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:39:31 +0000

Thread by Ryan

Last Friday, we ran a computer recycling fair and gear swap at Rally. I highly encourage your firms to follow some of the patterns of what work so well here at Rally.

From many dimessions, it was a huge success and tons of fun. You can see our internal event announcement in our Greening Rally hive.

We recycled 2,353 lbs lbs of computer gear with a local recycler
We swapped some great items and collectibles between employees
We down-cycled usable machines to a local charity

There were a number of things that were great about this event.

We organized this with relationship to our move to a new facility. (It was a good time to clean out the closets)
We organized it as a gear swap and recycling event, so that we could reuse the good stuff.
We set-up a down-cycling solution with The Jared Polis Foundation for usable machines.
We contracted a Denver recycler called Luminous to keep from sending the waste to Gana or China - they charged us per pound for all types of electronics gear. Rally committed to a minimum wieght to lock in a low price.
We passed along the cheap recycling costs to all our employees - $5 for one item or $10 for more than one machine. (This is much cheaper that recycling through community recycling at Ecocycle CHARM.)
We provided beer on a Friday afternoon and enjoyed ping-pong, wii and foosball with folks from all over the company.

I want to give a special thank you to Carl Schachter at Luminous and Jessie from our IT team for their great support of this event.

Profiting from reduced IT energy dependency (1 Comment)

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:23:35 +0000

Thread by Ryan

Last week, I had a good chat with the legendary Ephraim Schwartz from InfoWorld. He asked me about a continuum of "green" efforts. Based on our work here at Rally, I had a bunch to say on the topic. Please read the article and let me know what you think of his article and some of my opinions on greening IT.

Governor Ritter's Energy Website

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:04:23 +0000

web bookmark by Jack Mudd

link

http://www.colorado.gov/energy/

notes

This is something to be aware of.

Colorado Climate Action Plan

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:01:34 +0000

Thread by Jack Mudd

Content

This is the Climate Action Plan for Colorado that includes a letter from Gov. Bill Ritter. It outlines the ways that Colorado will face climate change, and details the plan to get emissions to 20% below 2005 levels by 2020.

In this ambitious first draft of Colorado's plan to reduce emissions, some lofty goals are set. The whole plan is an interim measure designed to help us on our way towards the ultimate goal of reducing our emissions to 80% below 2005 levels by 2050. The plan details that we will need to work to develop reporting protocols in order to help us on this path, and that if no plan is passed by Congress in the next year, we will join the Western Climate Initiative.

Furthermore, the plan sets specific goals for Colorado state government to lead by example, such as reducing overall energy consumption by 20% by 2012, rather than 2020, and reducing petroleum in the state vehicle fleet by 25% by 2012 as well.

This plan is a step in the right direction, and represents a commitment by the state of Colorado to fighting climate change.

File

ColoradoClimateActionPlan_001.pdf (864KB)

The Dark Side of the Internet

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:15:47 +0000

web bookmark by Jack Mudd

link

EcoTimes Article

notes

Here is a writeup by someone Ryan and I got to meet with on the hidden environmental costs of IT.

IBM's new Green Data Center

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:57:41 +0000

web bookmark by Jack Mudd

link

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2008/06/16/daily22.html

notes

This is an example of the commitment Boulder has made to attracting and keeping top tech and top sustainability talent to the region. And a great step forward for IBM, who has previously announced its "Big Green Innovations" plan.

State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:25:00 +0000

book by amy_m

author

The WorldWatch Institute

ISBN

978-0-393-33031-1

link to buy

http://www.worldwatch.org/stateoftheworld

review

from the website

Environmental issues were once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, but today they are dramatically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers. Around the world, innovative responses to climate change and other environmental problems are affecting more than $100 billion in annual capital flows as pioneering entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments take steps to create the Earth’s first “sustainable” global economy.

In State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, researchers with the Worldwatch Institute and other leading experts highlight an array of economic innovations that offer new opportunities for long-term prosperity. For example:

In 2006, an estimated $52 billion was invested in wind power, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources, up 33 percent from 2005. Preliminary estimates indicate that the figure soared as high as $66 billion in 2007.
Carbon trading is growing even more explosively, reaching an estimated $30 billion in 2006, nearly triple the amount traded in 2005.
Innovative companies are revolutionizing industrial production while also saving money: for example, chemical giant DuPont cut its greenhouse gas emissions 72 percent below 1991 levels by 2007, saving $3 billion in the process.

Discuss Agile > Greening of the Software and High Tech Industry

Digital Dumping Ground

Description

Video Link

Microsoft Looks to Cut Carbon Footprint by 30% by 2012

link

keywords

notes

If I Were Mayor of Boulder......

Recycling Fair at Rally - Do it with a Local

Profiting from reduced IT energy dependency (1 Comment)

Governor Ritter's Energy Website

link

notes

Colorado Climate Action Plan

Content

More

File

The Dark Side of the Internet

link

notes

IBM's new Green Data Center

link

notes

State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy

author

ISBN

link to buy

review