“Green IT is not a company initiative; it’s not a campaign of ours. It is a reason to put out a new press release.”
The quote above came from an acquaintance of mine when I pushed him for details about his company’s “Green IT” information it had just prominently splashed across its homepage. (Green IT = using information technology to increase efficiency and sustainability) I pushed for details because I knew the company pretty well (a mid-sized international software company), and I knew they didn’t even have any internal sustainability or efficiency initiatives or even a CSR report, so I was curious.
The answer confirmed my suspicions that this was all so much marketing-driven who-ha. Clearly, the marketing department had read the latest Gartner and Forrester reports touting Green IT and decided to jump on the bandwagon.
None of this is to say that there aren’t real benefits conferred by Green IT. In offices, the datacenter is the biggest energy user, so increasing efficiency there can result in significant bottom line savings. Also, governments are increasingly looking for technological solutions to address climate change and carbon accounting.
But this company listed the benefits of its particular Green IT as “using less paper” and “reducing waste” among others. Really cutting edge stuff for a company that touts itself as a software leader, wouldn’t you say?
What effect has this green marketing push by vendors had on CIOs? According to Don Tennant at Computerworld, it is turning them sour on the notion of energy efficiency practices:
“It’s as if green has become the poison ivy of the corporate IT agenda. And vendors are hardly providing any calamine. Instead, they’re spreading the irritation in the form of green marketing hype, falling over themselves to be perceived as enablers of a green data center.”
For the sake of the CSR and sustainability agenda, this has to stop. One way would be for analyst organizations like Gartner and Forrester to rank the Green IT products out on the market and expose those that are just so much marketing-speak.
Another would be for CIOs to ask all potential vendors to answer questions on their Green IT credentials, similar to the brief survey available on Computerworld, as part of the bidding process. Even if a company ultimately didn’t base its purchasing decisions on a Green IT screen, it would force the industry to take their own claims seriously.
And we could use a bit more seriousness when it comes to green marketing claims.
About the author: Quinn McKew is an environmental entrepreneur and policy consultant with expertise in climate change, public lands, water and energy policy. With her MBA and experience in non-profit management, she seeks to leverage the best practices of the non-profit and business communities to foster a truly sustainable business culture.
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