Andrea Di MaioLast Wednesday I did have an intriguing conversation with officials in a large non-government organization that operates across the world. This organization is in the process of defining its own green IT policy, and – amongst other things – is looking at how to make its IT procurement greener. In the draft version of the policy they shared with me, I could read something like “IT suppliers should have environmental good practice system that meet ISO 14000 series (or equivalent) standards as part of their business practices“. In this first version, rather than defining on the desirable characteristics of a green IT product, they had decided to focus on the characteristics of suppliers, assuming that compliance with standards would imply a propensity to greener products and services.
However, as this organization is bound to buying some products in local countries, they are having an interesting discussion about whether requiring such a standard would have a discriminatory effect or put an excessive burden on smaller suppliers in less advanced countries. This is a very good example of how a one-size-fits-all approach to green IT does not work. It is certainly desirable to require compliance with international standards, and many make the argument that this increases competitiveness of suppliers, who can address a wider market. On the other hand the cost of compliance may be simply too high, especially in difficult economic times.
What multinational organizations operating in developed as well as developing countries should consider is to focus on which attributes of environmental sustainability they really need to stress in their procurement processes: these are likely to be more closely related to products and services than to the overall business practices of their suppliers. If the latter are key, they should select those attributes that are sensible taking into account the diversity of countries, and that do not create discrimination. Similarly, the definition of a “green product” should take into account what is feasible in different regions, and aim at identifying “green enough” products as opposed to requiring compliance with standards or self assessment schemes (such as EPEAT). These schemes can be taken as the basis to extract those (few) criteria that are the absolute minimum to consider a supplier and a product as environmentally viable.
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Category: green IT Tags: environmental sustainability
