Green Channel Awards: Vendor - APC

APC has done the double; winning Green Vendor of the Year for a second consecutive year at the ARN awards.

Speak to APC Pacific vice-president, Gordon Makryllos, and it’s not hard to see why.

It’s almost a three-pronged approach to green. The first is the very basic: APC’s entire value proposition is built around saving organisations on power costs and, in turn, reducing the impact on the environment.

“Computing isn’t going to go away,” Makryllos said. “We’re creating and storing more data, and then you’ve got the fact the cost of power of unit is increasing.

“We’ve got a very strong value proposition to allow customers and channel partners to take out a value proposition around reducing their costs of running a computing centre – whether server room or datacentre.”

The second prong is in actively taking a strong green message to market, through appointments and programs, and giving a strong incentive for APC customers and partners to adopt greener practices themselves.

APC recently appointed Christian Bertolini as its CTO and to act as its energy spokesperson.

Bertolini’s green credentials are impressive: he is a technical advisor to the Nabers group, which is committed to putting a star rating on the energy efficiency of buildings.

The vendor also persists with its Trade-UPS, a program that Makryllos said had been received very well in the industry.

“We have many UPS’ out there and they all have batteries, which aren’t always that great for the environment,” he said. “We’ve had a very active Trade-UPS program, where we offer customers a rebate and reverse logistics – we will take care of picking up the old UPS. If you sign up for the Trade-UPS, not only will it deliver you a new UPS, but we will take your old UPS and make sure that’s managed in an environmentally friendly way.”

And that’s not all. APC has also embraced social media, and uses its Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube accounts to promote a healthy and efficient green story.

The final leg is APC’s own internal processes. The vendor takes its own green credentials very seriously, and is willing to spend more to be more environmentally conscious.

“Within our own organisation, we went out of our way to introduce energy efficient and green technology in our warehouse, such as handheld RFID guns, to eliminate much of the paper which we used to have,” Makryllos said.

“We use pallets specifically designed for the warehouse logistics centre from recycled Australian timbers, as well as biodegradable shrink wrap – when you shift the amount of volume of product we do shrink wrap is a necessary evil but just like plastic bags you can have environmentally friendly ones or not.

“It’s costing a bit more but we thought it was important we had biodegradable shrink wrap, high density storage.”

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