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Greening your IT is always a good idea, not just for the sake of the environment (although this is as good a reason as any), but also to save money and to demonstrate a culture of corporate social responsibility.

Today’s successful organisations combine business improvements with a reduction in environmental impact. ‘Green Shift’ is about changing organisational cultures and individual behaviour to combine environmental, profit and efficiency objectives.

But in the real world it can be a daunting challenge and there will be some difficult questions which need answering such as:

• How do I go about constructing appropriate policies and metrics?
• How do I engage with employees and suppliers? and;
• How can IT begin to enable carbon footprint reduction in the organisation as a whole?

Gary Hird, Technical Strategy Manager for the John Lewis Partnership, faced this challenge when he took on responsibility for progressing Green IT initiatives for John Lewis and Waitrose in 2006.

Since then, Gary has well and truely got to grips with Green IT and transformed the way the John Lewis Partnership tackle green issues. In fact Gary and the John Lewis Partnership have been important members of the Environmental IT Learship Team (EILT) – a unique advisory group consisting of major IT users seeking to make the use of IT more efficient.

Gary was also shortlisted for the British Computer Society’s Intel IT Leader of the Year award in 2008.

In a major effort to share his experiences and to help other organisations to navigate through the mass of information surrounding Green IT more easily, by giving it a structure and by outlining some practical examples of techniques and solutions that IT departments have adopted, Gary has written a book Green IT in Practice.

Green IT in Practice contains a variety of ideas for establishing and formalising a Green IT programme within an organisation. The experience of the John Lewis Partnership’s Green IT programme during 2007 and the first half of 2008 is discussed in detail and is a core element.

Chapters cover the link between general Corporate Social Responsibility and Green IT, how to go about constructing appropriate policies and metrics, and thoughts on how to engage with employees and suppliers. Individual case studies on key Green IT initiatives are then discussed in turn, before the book ends with a chapter considering how IT can begin to enable carbon footprint reduction in the organisation as a whole.

Endorsed by Global Action Plan

Written by Gary Hird, Technical Strategy Manager for the John Lewis Partnership, who has responsibility for progressing Green IT initiatives for John Lewis and Waitrose, and endorsed by Trewin Restorick, Director of the environmental charity Global Action Plan, this key book exudes tried and tested helpful advice, techniques and examples.

Green IT in Practice is available to order from our one-stop-shop for immediate dispatch.

Gary is also keen to highlight that this book is available as a download as well for those who wish to reduce the carbon footprint of the printed version!

Tags: Green IT, IT Governance

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under IT Governance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.