Green Products: Features

Servers get most of the glory when it comes to energy management, but networking gear is about to catch up.

At Storage Networking World a couple of weeks ago, the focus was on solid-state drives and cloud technologies.

Sixty-five percent of consumers think some companies overstate their green credentials to sell more products, according to research presented by industry organization Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) at the International Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday.

A number of cool and weird items are on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show, including a money-saving surge protector and a pair of goggles that double as a mobile TV.

Chief Technology Officer Arvind Thapar wants to bring new green technology to his company, but his proposed initiative -- installing wind turbines to generate power -- is decidedly outside the usual realm of IT.

Do it for the money. If you still think you know better than some of the brightest scientific and economic minds in the world, and the overwhelming majority of researchers who have spent more time on the climate change issue than anyone else, then at least save yourself and your clients some coin.

HP saw potential in used water bottles. Hewlett-Packard found a way to turn those old bottles, along with other types of recyclable consumer plastics, into ink-jet printer cartridges.

It is imperative that businesses quickly recognize the need for environmentally sound behaviors and good business practices to co-exist, Nortel President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Zafirovski said today at FORTUNE's first-ever Brainstorm: GREEN Conference** in Pasadena, Calif.

Spurred by business needs as well as environmental concerns, green IT projects blossomed in datacenters and on desktops throughout the world in 2007.

Thanks to a massive datacenter consolidation, hardware refresh, and creative, energy-efficient facility design, Sun has reduced power capacity demand by 75 per cent at its California datacenter alone, saving US$1.1 million per year in energy costs, while increasing its datacenter processing power more than four times. Overall, Sun estimates that its consolidation efforts will save 4,100 tons of CO2 per year and cut 1 per cent from its total carbon footprint.

Fulfilling the demand for broadband to millions of users across the globe takes more than just ingenuity, it takes energy -- lots of it. Accounting for nearly 1 per cent of total power consumption in the UK alone, BT Group was faced with a dilemma: how to scale and roll out new services to take advantage of new market opportunities without overburdening its energy budget -- and the climate.

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program was first announced in 2005, media attention centered on two aspects: the US$100 price tag and the humanitarian nature of the project. Three years later, the environmental genius of these award-winning laptops still not only burns bright but even inspires copycats. Vendors such as Asustek and Via are working to bring their own low-cost, low-power computing devices to emerging markets and education.

Pushing telepresence as a way to cut the cost of corporate travel isn't working too well so the industry is looking to promote the video/audio technology as a way for businesses to embrace green principles, according to speakers at a recent telepresence conference.