Leafing through the latest environmental news, we ran across six predictions for green IT in 2012.

We like that sort of thing, predictions. What we really like is running across ”Predictions for 2010″ online, and having a good chuckle. Almost as good as the ”What The World Will be Like In 2000″ movies we had in school back in the 1970s, where serious scientists and researchers provided us with educated opinions on what lifestyles those of us lucky enough to make it to 2000 would enjoy. The movies were barely distinguishable from any episode of The Jetsons, but we digress.

You mean your house doesn't look like this?

Anyway, there it was, Prediction #1 for green IT in 2012: ”Greenwashing is dead.”

Really. Do tell. Nobody invited us to the ecofuneral.

Greenwashing: Making Green Off Green Dreams

Greenwashing is the practice of trying to cash in on the impulse some people have to support only eco-friendly products by presenting your product in such a way that it appears quite eco-friendly, even though in reality it probably isn’t.

It’s not a new concept. Through the 1970s, when ecological concerns first became household topics, “Public utilities spent $300 million advertising themselves as clean green companies. This was eight times more than the money they spent on pollution reduction research.”

In 2009, the Environmental Leader  published findings of a survey commissioned by Green Seal and EnviroMedia Social Marketing, reporting four out of five people “say they are still buying green products and services today.”

Paying More Green For Green Products

Lots of companies would love to have their products seen as ”green,” since that’s usually worth a not-insignificant markup — the guilt tax — over non-green substitutes. Go ahead, price a Prius and a car with similar features and capabilities. Compare an organic apple’s price to a normal apple’s price. In the same vein, check the price of a pound of fair trade coffee versus a pound of mass-market coffee. See? People are willing to pay more to assuage their consciences.​

As Eliza Leigh of Greenwala writes, people will pay more for what they perceive to be environmentally friendly products because they’re assuming that ”the extra funds offset higher production costs associated with greater environmentally responsible standards.”

Back in 2008, Wired reported that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikia Green with the stated purpose of having the community check up on products claiming to be green-friendly, and charging what Wired called the “ethical premiums” consumers are willing to pay, the extra green they’re willing to lose out of their wallets for the greater green good.

Wales said upon launch that the idea was to let the site answer the question, “What are the basic impacts of various things that I can do?” It was a great idea, but a lack of good data has hampered the growth of the site. Frankly, companies have a whole lot more at stake in being perceived as green and will make it difficult for anyone to prove greenwashing.

Poland Spring: The Eco-Friendly Plastic Bottle

One of our favorite examples of unashamed greenwashing is the Poland Spring “Eco-Shape” bottle. Yes, a plastic bottle, Public Enemy #1 for many environmental activists, is greenwashed as eco-friendly since, according to Poland Spring officials, it uses 30 percent less plastic and 30 percent less paper for the label than their old bottles did.

Poland Spring knows a good thing when it sees it: “Hey, we can cut productions costs and boost our green street cred in one stroke. And I bet we can charge more, too.” It’s like calling a thief ”victim-friendly” because he only steals $70 of the $100 on your desk.

It It Intentional or Ignorant?

A 2009 study cited by SmartCompany Australia found that a​ U.S. expert explained that most companies’ claims of green-friendly products are wrong, not necessarily because they’re trying to deceive you for the sake of chiseling a few more bucks out of you, but because ”they are not yet good enough at green advertising.”

Scott McDougall, chief executive of North American environmental marketing agency TerraChoice, studied green products for sale in Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and found that virtually all — over 98 percent – ”committed at least one of TerraChoice’s seven sins of greenwashing, which include unsubstantiated claims, vaguely defined claims, misleading third-party endorsements and false claims.”

Maybe the products really are as good as advertised. Maybe they really are pretty green, when it gets right down to it. But it’s not accurately reflected in the advertising the company puts out, which could make exaggerated claims, or simply honestly misstate the effect or the level of green-friendliness. The companies are new at this, too, cut ‘em a break. Most of them are trying to do the right thing.

Not greenwashed -- green inside and out!

“We’re Too Smart for Greenwashing Around Here.”

Despite its lucrative enticements, GreenBiz considers greenwashing in the IT realm dead for 2012, ”hung out to dry by efficient IT solutions that actually measure, report and save energy, CO2 consumption and associated costs.”

Part of that has to do, they think, with the fact that, simply put, we’ve seen this movie before. GreenBiz argues that the market’s reached a level of maturity making it difficult, if not impossible, to palm off a non-green option as green. ”There is a distinct difference between solutions that actually save energy and those that say they do,” GreenBiz observes, “and that’s found in the accuracy of the reporting that’s built into the tool.”

In other words, when a company claims its product ”cuts power usage by fifty percent! Save more of the earth’s resources and lower your carbon footprint!” we now have the reporting technology to check up on that.

What’s Taking Greenwashing’s Place in IT? Efficiency.

If greenwashing is dead, what’s taking its place? Nature abhors a vacuum, after all. GreenBiz thinks 2012 will see “the emergence of Efficient IT, not only as a bona fide market segment but also as an emerging trend.”

IT spend, worldwide, totals well into the trillions of dollars. Energy consumption is ​the lowest-hanging fruit for cutting into that. People aren’t willing to pay for greenwashed IT just to salve consciences or to go along with the herd anymore. They want stuff that will actually reduce their energy consumption.

What Does Well-Done Green IT Look Like?

Ken Gonzalez, group product manager at Symantec Global, recently wrote that ”executives are looking into greener IT because energy costs are such a large operating expense for IT.”

Frankly, this has always seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. So many of the exhortations to ”go green!” by environmental activists amount to little more than hectoring people assumed to be on a lower plane of enlightenment: “You have to go green because you, yes you, can wreck the entire planet if you don’t.” Naturally, intelligent people tune that out as the white noise it is.

But why not talk to business people where they live? Going green can mean reducing expenses, and businesses always like sitting down to talk about that. This is Gonzalez’s approach. “By using more energy-efficient IT and business processes, organizations can reduce operating costs,” he says. If you get your warm fuzzies from thinking that how much electricity you’re using in your apartment Makes A Difference, go ahead and take that angle for yourself. But don’t come around here telling us our SUV is personally responsible for polar bears dying.

Gonzalez notes that “the amount of energy consumed by servers and data centers alone receives significant publicity,” and never mind the carbon emissions, he adds that ”a third to half of this energy is wasted by underused servers and storage devices, among other culprits. Implementing greener IT tactics such as consolidating or decommissioning underused devices and/or applications can provide immediate reductions in energy consumption and costs.”

See? You don’t even have to bring global warming into the conversation or hit ‘em with Al Gore. Businesses are paying attention when you say things like ”reductions in energy consumption and costs” and ”practical ways for your organization to contain costs and improve operating efficiency,” even without the “while reducing carbon emissions” part.

How Is This Done?

Gonzalez offers some tips.

Comply with regulations. These will vary somewhat, depending where you are in the ​world, but, generally speaking, Greening Government ICT in the U.K., or EPA Data Center recommendations, LEED building guidelines and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Star program are good places to start.​

He lists money-saving greening tactics for endpoints and printers, which he defines as ”the devices used by employees, contractors and visitors to perform personal computing and to access and use corporate applications, data and IT resources,” including desktop computers and mobile devices.

Some good things to do here to save money while going green include, in Gonzalez’s words, unplugging power bricks not connected to a device, replacing old monitors with LCD screens, switching monitors to “standby” after five minutes of inactivity, shutting down PCs after office hours, enabling active power management on desktops, ensuring reuse of equipment that is no longer required but is still serviceable, and specifying lower-power-consumption CPUs and high-efficiency power supply units with 80 percent conversion or better.

Modest, simple, yes. Economically beneficial, yes. Greenwashing, no.​

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2 Responses to “Will IT Efficiency Slay the Greenwashing Dragon?​”