Watching various IBM executives present on their Green Initiatives, they have done a good job on identifying Electricity and Water as areas they will focus on selling products like WebSphere.  IBM's latest move creating the eco-patents section of the World Business Council for Business Development makes it appear as an industry effort.  But, when you dig into areas like their overview. You can see IBM and Weyerhaeuser are the main companies behind the eco-patents.

   

Next steps

   

If you are interested in helping benefit the world through the Eco-Patent Commons:

   

    
1. Contact any of the representatives listed below to express your interest and discuss joining the Eco-Patent Commons.
      
2. Contact your Intellectual Property (IP) function and examine your business's patent portfolio. Identify patents your business may want to contribute to the Eco-Patent Commons. Many businesses do not routinely patent innovations that benefit the environment, so some participants will have only a small number of patents to pledge. Contributing even one patent is sufficient for participation and can make a significant difference in helping to further sustainable development.
   

   

Contact

   

Wayne Balta      
Vice President, Corporate Environmental Affairs & Product Safety      
IBM Corporation      
balta@us.ibm.com

   

Marc A. (Sandy) Block      
Counsel,      
Intellectual Property      
IBM Corporation      
msb@us.ibm.com

   

George Weyerhaeuser       
Senior Fellow      
President's Office      
WBCSD      
weyerhaeuser@wbcsd.org

   

      
      

   

Got a copy of the Cassatt Energy Efficiency Survey.  Highlights are as follows:

From the responses we received from IT professionals and facilities managers we learned several interesting facts:

• 63% of you are either working on a data center energy-efficiency project now or expect to within the next year
• 43% of you have a data center that is within 25% of its maximum power capacity
• 61% of you are aware that the EPA recommends turning off idle servers to save energy, but over 30% say you don’t know how many servers are idle at any given time
• Server power management software is the energy saving strategy that large companies selected most frequently as their next step for the future (29%)

Found this interesting research conducted by British Telecom on efforts made by the public sector to act sustainable, and perceptions of its citizens.  This makes a good point in how difficult it is to market your green efforts.

100 per cent of organisations* in the sector believe that operating sustainably is important to their reputation. However, only three per cent of citizens** think today’s organisations are honest about what they are doing to become more environmentally or socially responsible, with a third believing organisations exaggerate what they are doing.

Employees** across the public sector displayed similar scepticism. The research found that 43 per cent of employees say their employer is currently doing too little to improve sustainability and nearly a quarter (24 per cent) do not believe that the organisation that they work for is environmentally and socially responsible. Almost one in five (19 per cent) believes that their employer only takes action when forced to by external pressures.