GreenITStrategy.com

Today I presented on “Environmentally Sustainable IT” at the Microsoft DigiGirlz camp...two months ago I had no idea that Microsoft even ran this type of conference!

DigiGirlz is essentially a high tech camp for high school girls in the US and Sweden.  I presented at the Charlotte, North Carolina event to about 110 students over 4 sessions.  It was pretty cool - we never had anything like this for girls in high school when I was there (which was not that long ago – luckily one of the girls pointed out 30 is not old – phew!).

Anyway, I started off telling the audience about how I got into IT (fell into it), then explained some of the environmental issues IT is faced with today.  The top 10 below are adapted from the book ‘Green to Gold’ by Esty & Winston:

Then I went on to talk about Waste Management:

-          Over 130 million computers are being sold around the world today.  Where the hell are these old computers going?  Check out www.ban.org to view some pics on where the are going!  Hardware manufacture initiatives on modular computers (for easier recycling) and recycling programs (like Microsoft MAR) help avoid these outcomes.

-          The manufacture of a single computers takes the following resources (see http://www.unu.edu/zef/publications-d/flyer.pdf):

o   240kg / 528 pounds fossil fuels – more than 10 times the weight of the computer

o   22kg / 48.4 pounds chemicals

o   1500kg /  3300 pounds water

Massive!

I’ll talk about the rest of my presentation in future posts...or check out my session at Microsoft TechEd Australia this year...

So at the start of this presentation I prepared myself for the fact that most of these 15/16/17 year old girls are not going to care about Green IT – but I told myself that if I encourage just 1 girl to be interested, then it would have been worthwhile – I am definitely an optimist J  And it happened!  In the last session of the day, one of the girls came up to me and asked why I do Green IT (she was concerned recently watching the whaling and polar bear issues).  I told her about growing up on a farm and wanting to be a Park Ranger but not getting the marks from school (ahhh...slight rebel!).  But I saw it physically ‘click’ with her when I told her I wrote a petition at school, went around the community to collect signatures for a local recycling program and sent it to my local council.  She thought it was a fantastic idea for her own school and I hope she pursues it.  As I have said in a previous post, I think sometimes the smallest wins are the best...