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A new bill has been proposed in Texas where manufacturers would have to place a sticker on any computer or monitor they wanted to sell in the state, informing consumers that they may return the equipment to the vendor for recycling or reuse without paying an additional fee. House Bill 2714 passed votes in the state Senate and House of Representatives in May and awaits a signature from Texas Governor Rick Perry

In this format the environmental responsibility lies on the PC manufacturer instead of the consumer. Other states have been exploring the “market-driven” approach to recycling which impose taxes on consumers or fees on vendors in order to fund government programs that administer the recycling programs.

The Texas bill has also had it’s fair share of criticism since it focuses only on PCs and their peripherals, instead of covering a wider array of electronic equipment.

Which do you think is the better system, should the manufacturer maintain the responsibility to recycle or does the onus lie on the consumer?

Personally, I think it’s a redundant question because the consumer will probably pay either way, It’s just a question of whether we pony up on the front end or the back. The reason is, most manufacturers will probably offset the cost of recycling by increasing their price point, hence costing the consumer either way. Which, leads me to my next point, that structure would give certain manufactures a distinct pricing advantage over their competitors simply because of their geographic location.

I think it behooves our government to address this legislations at the national lever and not the state, to ensure consistent standards and kept and all organizations are affected equally.

Taken from PC World

Save up to 90% off list price and save the environment too when you shop at UsedCisco.com

By Joshua Levitt

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HP, has vowed to reduce combined energy consumption across all its operations and product lines 20% by 2010. “HP has never attempted to do anything like this and neither has anyone else,” says John Frey, manager of corporate environmental strategies at HP. Still, he says the company is ready to forge ahead, creating benchmarks where necessary like the company did with the recycling of electronic products (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/10/06, “HP Wants Your Old PCs Back”).
In November, HP was the first major computer manufacturer to join the 80 PLUS, an electric utility-funded incentive program to integrate more energy-efficient power supplies into desktop computers and servers.

UsedCisco.com.Green Your network…reuse

1. Define an environmental policy
2. Start measuring and analysing
3. Green the staff: socialise the green issue and educate your workforce
4. Dare to switch off after hours
5. Begin the journey from always on to always available
6. Improve efficiency of the cooling in the data centre and factor in green design points into new data centre builds
7. Incorporate environmental criteria into procurement decisions
8. Start assessing your vendors – Beware the ‘green wash’
9. Create equipment disposal policy, process, control and audit trail
10. Be aware of GLOBAL e-waste legislation

Reuse & save 55-95% off list price
& help save the environment too!
Shop online at UsedCisco.com

Robust growth in the IT sector and in companies’ use of technology is leading to an acute power shortage, according to analyst firm Gartner. An independent study found that server electricity use doubled between 2000 and 2005 and could spike another 75 percent by 2010. Did you know that a large server farm uses as much energy as a city of 40,000 people? Gartner research team estimates that, “Half the world’s datacenters will run out of power by the end of 2008”. That means, as utility costs increase and energy needs advance, datacenters will not be able to keep up with the costs needed to run them.

A group of leading IT firms has banded together to try to Tackle the datacenter power shortage and head off an impending energy crisis.
This group includes Microsoft, IBM, Sun, HP, Intel, AMD, Rackable Systems, and VMWare. They have formed a nonprofit group called, “The Green Grid” to drive new metrics, technology standards, and best practices for curbing power consumption.

Other independent companies have begun developing products to address these issues.
A firm called ColdWatt, spun off from Rockwell Scientific in 2004 to develop a digital power conversion technology for AC-DC power subsystems. The fact is, more than 50 percent of typical datacenter power consumption today is used for power delivery. The new system uses magnetics to increase energy storage in its power supplies and digital controls to boost efficiency and flexibility. According to the company, its front-end power supplies boast better than 90 percent efficiency, compared with the 70 percent efficiency level of commodity power supplies.
Replacing your existing power supplies with more efficient alternatives from ColdWatt could save US$50,000 a year for a 400-server datacenter.

Joshua Levitt
E-Commerce Sales and Marketing Manager

UsedCisco.com Green Your network…reuse

A year ago, Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun outlined plans to build the first public, multi-tenant grid (just like the power companies run), and make it available for $1/cpu-hr.  The “Sun Grid“, is essentially a collection of low cost network, storage, computing and software elements, lashed together to do work that historically required very expensive dedicated proprietary technologies.

Now we can all experience for ourselves what it’s like to use one of the world’s largest supercomputers, without having to house it, manage it, power it, administer it, provision it… or buy it. Clearly shared resources like these and the old Colocation Centres are far more efficient and not to mention less expensive. However, one benefit we hadn’t considered was the fortuitous environmental implications they fascilitate. By pooling all these resources, we can seriously cut back on harmful greenhouse gas emissions caused by  the  millions of organizations independent inefficient networks.

The big question is, will organizations commit to shared resources like these, or will they limit their flexibility and compromise their security. I guess time will tell. Jonathan Schwartz clearly feels they are the new way to go, and I for one agree!

UsedCisco.com   Green Your network…reuse

IBM has begun a $1 billion-per-year project to design ‘green’ data centers that consume less energy.  - Deni Connor, Network World.

Good for IBM – Running your servers and personal computers, under-utilising hardware, using old servers, not optimising server space and virtual servers all use energy that creates a carbon footprint. For example, a moderate size server has about the same annual carbon footprint as a gas-guzzling SUV getting 15 miles-to-the-gallon.

Reducing an organisation’s carbon footprint is not just the environmentally correct thing to do, it’s also a way to save money.

* 3M reduced its carbon footprint by 37 percent and have saved more than $190 million.

* Canon’s energy efficient products yielded savings of $250 million for its customers.

* IBM saved $791 million by reducing emissions 37.8 percent through energy conservation measures.

* California, the world’s sixth largest economy, has already saved itself $20 billion in electricity and natural gas expenditures and by 2011 forecasts saving $57 billion more.

 UsedCisco.com Green Your Network…Reuse

Resources:

IT ‘Carbon Footprints’ Waste Billions - by PAUA INTERFACE LTD

IBM Announces ‘Big Green’ Initiative – by Deni Connor, Network World

“AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TechTurn, a trusted leader in technology recovery, refurbishing and resale, announced today that it processed more than 2,000 used electronic devices as part of an Earth Day recycling event sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and Dell and supported by the National Recycling Coalition. The free computer equipment drop-off event on April 22 in Washington, DC attracted more than 500 consumers who donated nearly 86,000 pounds of old PCs, laptops, monitors, printers, and other electronic devices.”

Do you think events like these are viable in most US cities, and who do you think should finance them?

Joshua Levitt
UsedCisco.com

Green Your Network…Reuse!

I would like to announce the start of a “Green Your Network blog from UsedCisco.com. This “Green Initiative” is focused on new ways for networking companies to share and discuss environmentally friendly methods to lessen the impact we have on the environment and the consumption of limited resources.

“The energy from manufacturing, distribution and use of information and communications technology emits approximately 2 percent of total global carbon dioxide, which is equal to the emissions from the entire airline industry.”
- IT market research firm, Gartner

Some topics on this blog will include:
Reuse
Recycling
Power consumption
Asset Recovery
Corporate “Green initiatives”
Disposal and recycling of electronic equipment

 This weblog is authored by:

Joshua Levitt
E-Commerce Sales and Marketing Manager
Ph. 718-707-8846
jlevitt@usedcisco.com