Green Data Center Blog

eBay announces Green Data Center part of 15% GHG Reduction

Environmental Leader has a post on eBay committing to a 15% GHG reduction.

eBay to Emit 15% Fewer GHGs by 2012

E-commerce powerhouse eBay plans to reduce its 2012 greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent, when compared to its 2008 emissions. This news comes at the same time as eBay has donated some old servers to the University of Notre Dame, where the servers will assist in AIDS and cancer research.

Heat generated by the Notre Dame servers will be used to warm a greenhouse that is adjacent to where the servers are housed, according to a press release.

eBay will do most of its work in reducing emissions by improved data management and infrastructure. Next year, the company will begin using a “green” data center that will handle more than a third of its IT infrastructure. The site, in South Jordan, Utah, is being built to LEED Gold status.

The eBay press release is here, and extracted the data center parts.

Energy Efficient Operations and Data Management

As an ecommerce company, eBay has a relatively small carbon footprint with a majority of the company's environmental impact coming from the energy consumed by its data centers. The company's approach to data management and infrastructure will be a key efficiency driver. In 2010, eBay will unveil a new state-of-the-art green data center that will house more than a third of its global data infrastructure. The site, which is being built to the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standards in South Jordan, Utah, will deliver state-of-the-art efficiencies in cooling and power management, as well as in IT infrastructure and software.

Hardware efficiency is mentioned.

eBay also operates on a two-year tech refresh system that allows the company to process more transactions per watt. While this system drives energy efficiency in its operations, it comes with environmental collateral damage in the form of e-waste.  To address this, eBay has undertaken new initiatives in the past year to actively repurpose and extend the useful life of hardware.

and eWaste is addressed

An example of the company's commitment to reuse can be found in its recent donation of old servers to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. The server donation initiative not only puts old eBay servers to work in Notre Dame's research labs to power AIDS and cancer research, but leverages the heat generated from those servers to warm a greenhouse that sits adjacent to the laboratory.

Renewable energy is part of the reduction with fuel cells.

Investments in Renewable Energy
eBay continues to support the use of renewable energy to green its operations. The company opened a 197,000 square foot office building in San Jose last year, which features a 650 kW solar installation and has also been LEED Gold certified - with dimming systems and the use of recycled materials throughout.  Following that, eBay is installing a new 100kW solar installation at the company's offices in Denver, Colorado. A fuel cell strategy is also under way - to be announced in early 2010.

Frontline PBS Special: Digital Dumping Ground – eWaste Documented

PBS has a special that just aired on June 23, 2009 on Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground.

The video is here.

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.

The team meets with Mike Anane, a local journalist who has been writing about the boys at this e-waste dump.

“Life is really difficult; they eat here, surrounded by e-waste,” Anane tells them. “They basically are here to earn a living. But you can imagine the health implications.”

Some of the boys burn old foam on top of computers to melt away the plastic, leaving behind scraps of copper and iron they can collect to sell. The younger boys use magnets from old speakers to gather up the smaller pieces left behind at the burn site.

There is an interactive map.

A slide show.

Close up an Old Google Server, and eWaste

Here are a few more pictures of the Google Server which is ready for retirement.

 

 

 

In a presentation Google presented their eWaste like the above server.

Note Google’s electronic waste disposal graph vs. the industry average of 18%.

eBay is Carbon Neutral Since 2007, Why? 1,000 Passionate Green Employees

Found this press release on eBay’s Green team.  I’ve always believed Green efforts are more credible when coming from the grassroots of employees who want to make a difference.

The eBay Green Team initiative grew out of a grassroots effort begun in 2007 by a small group of passionate eBay employees who wanted to put their environmental values to work. Today, more than 1,000 eBay employees in 18 countries are Green Team members, supporting environmental causes in their local communities and championing sustainable business practices within eBay. When the company needed more office space, the Green Team led eBay to construct the first building built to LEED Gold Standards in San Jose, CA, featuring the city's largest solar panel installation. eBay has also been a carbon neutral company since 2007 through commitments to energy efficiency, alternative power, green buildings and carbon offsets, thanks to efforts by the eBay Green Team.

The last sentence is little known.  eBay has been carbon neutral since 2007.  Why? What is the business justification? Try stopping 1,000 passionate green employees who want to make a difference and think their company should be carbon neutral.

Curious I went to one of my earliest blog entries on eWaste which was about eBay’s rethink web site.  In that entry the list of companies on eBay’s rethink site were.

Apple, Best Buy,Circuit City, Dell, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Toshiba, UPS, USPS, Verizon.

Now the list has grown.

• Apple
• Basel Action
  Network
• Best Buy
• CollectiveGood Foundation
• CEA-Consumer Electronics Association
• Circuit City
• CTIA-The Wireless Association ™
• Dell
• Earth 911
• EPA
• Gateway
• Goodwill
• Hewlett-Packard
• IBM
• Ingram Micro
• Intel
• International Association of Electronics Recyclers
• March of Dimes
• Motorola
• National Cristina Foundation
• Nokia
• Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
• Toshiba
• USPS
• UPS
• Verizon Wireless
• The Wireless
  Foundation

*One bug, don’t know quite what defines new, but the list had BestBuy, Circuit City, and Toshiba on the web site in 2007, and Mar 2009, the companies are still listed as new.

Another Way to Reduce Wasteful Spam

Spam filtering is a necessity of email, and we have all gone through the difficulty of missing an important piece of email because it went to your spam folder.  WSJ has a short post on one alternative.

Email With a Ribbon on It

Goodmail Systems Inc. has developed a way to fight email fraud like phishing, the scam that uses what appear to be legitimate email messages from companies or other organizations to get victims to reveal information like Social Security numbers or credit-card account passwords.

Goodmail, a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif., raised $20 million in Series C funding last month from investors led by Bessemer Venture Partners to support its email-certification business.

Goodmail's clients are companies, nonprofits and government agencies that want consumers to be able to tell that the email the organization sends them is legitimate. Clients route their email to consumers through Goodmail, which tags each message with a blue-ribbon icon to show it isn't fraudulent. Goodmail currently handles about three billion messages a month.

I wonder how many email alerts from IT systems go to the spam folder especially when sent outside the company domain to service partners?

If you have this problem, feel free to comment to this post.

Business Model for Used Servers

cnet newsblog has an article about when used servers cost most than new

GALWAY, Ireland--Think of the Multis Group as sort of the Antiques Roadshow of the server world.

The Galway, Ireland-based company specializes in refurbishing, and then selling, used servers. Refurbished PCs and servers are increasingly in vogue because remanufacturing represents a more environmentally efficient way to recycle old electronics than harvesting components from these old machines or melting them down for raw materials.

Multis, in fact, plans to open a 70,000-square-foot facility in Union City, Calif., later this month to refurbish and sell servers for North American customers. That marks a reversal in the usual U.S.-Ireland tech relationship.

Unlike refurbished PCs and cell phones, servers maintain a high resale value that can equal or even exceed the cost of new equipment, said Multis CEO and founder Sean Keenan. Why? Manufacturers might produce only a single server model for 18 months to two years. Corporate customers, however, often don't want to migrate to new hardware that quickly. Instead, they move at a three- to seven-year pace. As a result, they often have a need for discontinued equipment.

People should consider contacting Multis to discuss end of life for their servers and an eWaste plan as part of creating a green data center.

EPA's Cel Phone eWaste Program

The eWaste momentum continues with the EPA's partnership with AT&T Wireless, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples, and T-Mobile to recycle old cel phones. It's only a matter of time before the momentum shifts to IT equipment.

"Thanks to our Plug-In partners' efforts, recycling an old cell phone has become a quick and easy way for Americans to help protect the environment," said Susan Bodine, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. "By dropping it off at a store or sending it through the mail, Americans have more recycling options today than ever before."
To kick-off the campaign, EPA released today a series of print public service announcements, "Recycle Your Cell Phone. It's An Easy Call," which highlight the convenience and environmental and social benefits of recycling a cell phone. EPA also introduced a podcast that addresses many common questions on cell phone recycling.
EPA started the campaign because many consumers still do not know where or how they can recycle their unwanted cell phones. Consequently, less than 20 percent of unwanted cell phones are recycled each year.
Recycling a cell phone offers an opportunity for everyone to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy, and conserve natural resources. An estimated 100 to 130 million cell phones are no longer being used, many languishing in storage. If Americans recycled 100 million phones, we could save enough upstream energy to power more than 194,000 U.S. households for a year. If consumers were able to reuse those 100 million cell phones, the environmental savings would be even greater, saving enough energy to power more than 370,000 U.S. homes each year.

EDS Eight Tips to Reduce IT Environmental Impact, lack critical tip

EDS has a press release for their eight tips to reduce the Environmental Impact of IT.  Their list is good, but they miss the need for an Energy monitoring system.  If you don't put a monitoring system in place as I talk about in my TechNet Article, you'll have no idea how effective the tips that EDS suggests are in reducing your energy costs.  EDS touts their innovative thought leadership in:

To help corporations and governments kick-off the new year right, the EDS Fellows have highlighted eight ways CIOs can extend the life of existing facilities and reduce the environmental impact of computing in 2008.

The title of EDS Fellow is awarded to the company’s most innovative thought leaders in recognition of their exceptional achievements. Each Fellow has a proven track record of creating world-class solutions for clients. In addition to their academic achievements and invention history, the 24 Fellows average 25 years of industry experience and innovative technology implementations.

One of their tips on maintenance Is one where a monitoring system can help you determine when maintenance is done poorly and actually decreases your efficiency.  There are some maintenance guides who have suggested that up to 50% of maintenance is ineffective or worse causes another failure due to error.  How many of you have taken your car in for maintenance to find there is a new problem which you think has been caused by your last maintenance call?  You can't challenge the car dealer, because you can't prove your car's state before and after the maintenance event. Also, ineffective maintenance is a waste which is not environmentallly friendly. A goal should be to do the maintance which has measureable impact to your performance.

Perform Rigorous Maintenance
The fifth option is more fundamental, but also very achievable. Data center managers can improve the efficiency of their facilities by rigorous maintenance to ensure all equipment is operating at the peak of efficiency as well as modifying layout and configuration of equipment to reduce cooling requirements. These and many more efficiency steps will increase overall data center efficiency and lower the carbon footprint.

eBay eWaste site

I found this interesting IBM reference to this eBay site on eWaste. With Intel as a leading proponent with other members like Apple, Best Buy,Circuit City, Dell, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Toshiba, UPS, USPS, Verizon.

Rethink: Fresh Ideas for a Cleaner World

eBay and fellow members of the Rethink Initiative are applying some fresh thinking to the problem of e-waste

On this site you can find information, tools and solutions that make it easy – and even profitable – to find new users for idle computers and electronics, and responsibly recycle unwanted products.

eBay and the Rethink Initiative: A natural combination
eBay recognizes that its member community of more than 157 million computer users can be a powerful force for good. Educating and enabling them to take action to reduce e-waste is good for the environment. eBay’s heritage is also about bringing buyers and sellers together – making it easy for people with idle computers and electronics to find others who can put them to good use. Putting old products to new use extends their useful life and delays their entry into the waste stream.

Faster, more advanced computers, cell phones and electronics offer endless possibilities for enrichment, learning and entertainment. But as consumers and businesses keep pace with the introduction of exciting new products, we are faced with a mounting challenge: what to do with the products we’re upgrading from.

It’s no small issue. Hundreds of millions of retired computers, cell phones and electronics sit idle or are discarded by Americans every year. We need to make smart choices about what we do with these products to help ensure a clean environment for future generations.

Rethink: A new approach
The Rethink Initiative brings together industry, government and environmental organizations to offer a fresh perspective and new answers to the challenge of e-waste.

Story of Stuff - A Green View of Stuff

Charles Earnest a Seattle Green Festival Catalyst sent an interesting link to The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard that tells

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

And, she discusses the PC obsolesnce.

There would be an interesting story for Servers in a data center in that a typical life cycle is 3 years before server hardware is osbsoleted out of a data center and possibly accelerating to even shorter times given the fast pace of energy efficiency improvements.  Jim Lynch in a technet article discusses how PCs are recycled.

One of the most amazing aspects of the Community MAR program is that it is able to supply licenses for Windows^® 2000 and Windows XP for only $5 USD. MARs supply these licenses—over 200,000 a year—on refurbished PCs to nonprofit organizations, schools, libraries, colleges, and, in the U.S., technology-access programs for low-income or disabled individuals. In this way, Community MARs reach those on the wrong side of the digital divide, providing access to educational and employment opportunities.

Shouldn't the same be available for Servers?  One statistic I've heard is that 30% of servers are sold to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Think of how many communities could benefit from the servers powering search.  The problem is it is easy for a corporate culture to recycle servers.  It is far to easy to scrap the IT hardware to insure protection of intellectual property. All it takes is one law suit to scare the attorney's to make it a corporate policy that all IT hardware will be destroyed.

Google has a good excuse in scrapping/destroying their server hardware in that who can run anything on their non-standard hw. What is the environmental impact of Googles' server hw ewaste vs. its latest renewable energy initiative?