Why green is green

But is it true, or was it just a slogan? And if green is green, what’s the best way to identify and act upon opportunities to produce eco-effective products and services?

Consumer demand for eco-effective products is real; and efforts that emphasise eco-effective design are being rewarded by the marketplace.

At Sun, we’ve seen the 'green is green' advantage in increased sales of our energy-efficient servers. And the list goes on.

In short, businesses of all types and sizes are clearly eager to transform green into green. But that doesn’t mean a project will sail through your company’s approval and budgeting processes simply because it’s eco-friendly.

From the company’s point of view, all product decisions are still about money. And that means now, more than ever, engineers and product design teams need to be specific about how their projects will solve customer problems, contribute revenue and create competitive advantages.

Within the next few years, virtually every new product or service will include environmental considerations as part of its core design specifications. Product engineers will need to respond to the issues, laws and requirements for eco-responsible products and services - and be able to take advantage of the opportunities that eco-responsible products represent.

Engineering for eco-efficiency

Corporations are recognising that environmental responsibility and fiscal responsibility are not mutually exclusive - in fact, they complement one another. And that’s great for engineers who want to improve the eco-effectiveness of a product or process. The question is how best to go about it.

It can be next to impossible to identify and measure the full range of environmental impacts of a single product or service, let alone determine priorities for improving environmental performance.

The issues include:

• Determining the carbon footprint of a product or service
• Understanding the impact of different sources of electricity
• Knowing which chemicals and materials are desirable - and which should be avoided
• Maximising the recyclability and minimising the waste of a product

Because of all of these challenges, engineers need a framework for thinking through the impacts and trade-offs of more responsible design.

In their recently published book, Citizen Engineer, Sun Microsystems executives David Douglas and Greg Papdopoulos present a pragmatic approach to product life cycle analysis to help engineers understand the overall environmental impacts of the products they design.

The recommended guidelines for setting priorities, requirements and goals include:

• making sure your product or service will meet all applicable environmental laws for every region where you plan to offer it
• placing a high priority on environmental features that will cut costs or increase market appeal for your product or service
• placing a high priority on minimising the effect of any environmental features that are required but will not have a negative business impact
• placing a high priority on environmental features that will help your company meet its overall environmental goals
• understanding the largest impacts of your product or service and making sure you have a plan to decrease the impact steadily over time

A new era of innovation - and profitability

There are plenty of examples of how social and environmental responsibility drives economics and how that in turn drives new innovations. However, social responsibility is about more than pure economics, and engineering is about more than filling market needs.

Today, product design teams and engineers are not merely catering to the tastes and demands of consumers; they are also influencing and guiding the attitudes and preferences of the society and creating new capabilities. This is the era that Douglas and Papadopoulos refer to as the advent of the 'citizen engineer'. The role of the engineer is broader than ever, with engineers serving as a true connection point between science and society.

There is a growing recognition that today presents a unique opportunity to make things that not only make money but that also make a real difference in our environment and in our society.

What businesses want

The bottom line is: if technology vendors want to make a difference, they need to start out by building commercial models that make sense not only in the context of saving the planet, but saving their customers money.

To a great degree this means that green-centric technologies should cost no more than technologies that aren’t green-friendly and more importantly, be capable of parring or even exceeding the performance of more traditional technologies.

Governments also need to step up to the plate and show their commitment to green technology by developing incentives and tax breaks that benefit the users and producers of green technologies. Governments also have the ability to set a good example by emphasising green procurement in their own purchases.

In summation, manufacturers and their partners need to adopt green thinking from the ground up. In terms of IT development, the hardware designers need to be building green technologies as a basic condition of their job and the enterprise architects designing green data centres and greener computing infrastructures for the same reason.

*Andrew Goodlace, Managing Director ANZ, Sun Microsystems