ANALYSIS OF GREEN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DELL AND TOSHIBA COMPANIES Nuttapon Pichetpongsa M alardalen University Innovation, Development and

Technology npa10001@student.mdh.se Gabriel Campeanu M alardalen University Innovation, Development and Technology gcu10001@student.mdh.se

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to present the adoption of Green Principles to practical practice on both local and international Information Technology industries. The reason of the embracement of these principles in industry is a result of environmental impacts caused by the Information Technology infrastructure in various areas such as greenhouse gas emissions, polluted water, hazardous waste, etc. Therefore, the Green principles were implemented into each section of the Information Technology infrastructure, to reduce those environmental impact problems. This paper is based mostly on the data inspired by Dell Inc. and Toshiba Corporation Corporate Social Responsibility reports. The paper focuses on the Green Information Technology in Principles and Practices paper and on the content analysis of two companies attitude related to the implementation of Green Information Technology concepts. Also, the showcase of similarities and differences between the two Green practices is presented. This work is an explorative boundary of Green Information Technology or Green Computing in Principles and Practices, which is relevant to software engineering, researches and students who are interested in this domain.

Introduction

In recent years, the Green Information Technology has been implemented with incredible success among companies on both local and international scale. The environmental protection aspect has become the adequate core that many industries are trying to follow in order to be more environmentally responsible [1]. Computers and electronic machines from all companies are consuming significant amounts of electricity, releasing a carbon dioxide gas (CO2 ), which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. The electrical usage is the main cause of climate change [1]. Furthermore, the unwanted Information Technology (IT) hardwares also posed to environmental problems during both of production and disposal process. The name for these unwanted hardware equipments is electronic waste

(E-Waste) [3]. Most companies are trying to minimize or eliminate the environmental impact of IT and to support the managing sustainable environment. In particular, Green IT is about improving or maintaining computing performance, while reducing the energy consumption and the carbon footprint [7]. However, implementing Green IT principles into practice involves the usage of many resources. The companies have to spent big amounts of money in order to reconstruct their IT infrastructure. For the purposes of this research paper, the authors decided to select two strong Information Technology (IT) industries as the case study subject: Dell Inc. and Toshiba Corporation. The authors are using the content analysis methodology. They review the data from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports of those companies and describe the basic concepts of Green IT applied by the companies. The paper also presents the Green IT approach to comprehensively and effectively point to the environmental impact of IT in following: Green use, Green disposal, Green design and Green manufacturing [6]. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an introduction of Green IT in Practices and Principles. Then, Section 3 presents a review of existing work on Green IT. In Section 4, is presented the content analysis methodology used and the Dell and Toshibas approaches related to Green IT. Finally, Section 5 contains discussions and limitations on the papers subject.

Green IT in Principles and Practices

Green IT is implemented into the IT framework [5] as set of best practices for optimizing the usage of computing resources [5]. The environmental impact towards IT, creates many issues such as growing accumulation of greenhouse gases or modifying the climate world and weather pattern [1]. The producing of electricity is the major cause of the climate change, because coal and oil are used to generate the electricity, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2 ) gas during

IDT:M alardalen University

the process [1]. The principles of Green IT were created not only to protect the environment and to save energy, but also to reduce the companys expenses on the long-term scenario [3]. The Green IT principles show the concepts of reducing the environmental impact. There are four key green holistic principles, which are focused on different areas and activities.

Figure 1. Four green holistic principles [1]. Figure 1 presents the four green holistic principles. These principles are focused on different areas and activities as follows [1]: Green use Reduce the energy consumption of data centers, computers and other information systems and use them in the environmental ways e.g. virtualization, turning off computer when not in use, etc. Green design Design energy efcient and environmentally sound components, computers, servers and equipments and concern more on the future of electronic parts e.g. eco-friendly design, LED monitor, etc. Green manufacturing Every process in manufacturing electronic components, computers and other associate subsystems should imply a low or no impact on the environment. Green disposal In this practice the company should plan refurbishment and reuse of old computers. Also, recycling process for unwanted computers or other electronics components should be prepared. Recently, computer industry realizes that going to be Green IT is the best direction to get success in both of environmental friendly and cost reducing [8]. The companies try to engage those four green holistic with the entire IT life cycle.

Practices of Nokia, Samsung, Sony, and Sony Ericsson: Content Analysis paper by Y. Wati and C. Koo [2]. It investigates and expands the concept of Green IT, which is implemented by four big companies. The authors used in their analyze the Corporate Social Responsibility reports, which are provided on the companys website. They analyzed the CSRs to nd matches between companys Green IT practice approach and the principles of Green IT from the [1] paper. The main difference between Y. Wati and K. Coos paper and our paper is that we analyzed the practices of Green IT principles in computer manufacturing area in opposite with the phone manufacturing area described in [2]. The Murugesans paper [1] shows the essential principles and practices, described also in our paper in the background section. Most recently work by S. Argawal and A. Nath, presents a new horizon of energy efciency and electronic waste minimization in a global perspective [4]. Their approach focuses on the study of the issues of climate change and also explores Green Computing from the business and IT perspective. This paper is related with our essay because the Green IT practices in computer manufacturing area, includes energy efciency and electronic waste perspectives. There are several papers which are related with our analysis, such as [5], [1] or [7]. These papers are presenting the Green IT principles in practice, more from a theoretical point of view. In our paper, we are focusing more on the practical view of implementing those principles.

4
4.1

Methodology
Data Construction

Two companies were analyzed in this paper, both from Information Technology sector. We selected Dell and Toshiba Company as our subjects, since these companies were catalogued as leading companies in terms of implementing green technology [14]. Another reason for our choice is that these companies have a similar business size. To analyze their green practices, we studied the information from companies sustainability reports. We inspect the CSR reports for 2011; however, for Toshiba Company we used the reports for both 2010 and 2011, since the nal version of 2011 report is not nalized.

4.2

Content analysis methodology

Related Work

There are several papers which analyze the Green IT in principles and practices. One of them is Green IT in

Content analysis is a methodology used in the social sciences research for summarizing or compressing large contents into fewer various aspects. This is a popular technique used in several elds of research to quantify

IDT:M alardalen University

and to analyze the relationships of the concepts and words from available resources e.g. company reports, newspaper items, interviews, etc. [9, 10] Each company (Dell Inc. and Toshiba Corporate) CSR reports allow the authors to analyze their content and to provide a transparent evaluation towards the companies attitude regarding Green IT. The information used from the reports is associated with the environmental aspect. Other activities are not reected in our research paper.

Dell managed to eliminate the usage of mercury from the production of laptops display. Also, toxic substances (asbis phthalate DEHP, etc) were eliminated from the plastic production process used in all Dells products. With the elimination of mercury from the laptop displays, and the transition to LED displays, Dell Company reduced also the products consumption of energy. Another Dells objective is energy-efcient design build in all its products. The result of manufacturing products with an energy-efcient design, contributed to a customer saving of $20 million (the equivalent of 220 million kilowatt hours). Building [11] Dell Company tries to minimize the environmental footprint of their own facilities. In order to do that, they set a goal, seven years ago, to increase non-hazardous waste recycling from their facilities, up to 99 percent by the end of 2012. Until the middle of 2011, the company managed to reuse 95 percent of their own waste. Along the waste reuse objective, Dell implemented several projects to reduce the water consumption. A major issue related to the Building strategy is the energy concern. Dell Company is buying green electricity in order to cover a part of their facilities consume. For example, the center from Round Rock, Texas is using 100 percent green electricity since 2007. In 2011, a 21 percent of Dells global electricity consumption was from green power sources.

4.3

Dells Resolution

Dells attitude related to Green It principles is based on the product lifecycle approach showed in Figure 2 and described in the following paragraphs. In every phase of the products life, new green actions are researched to improve the environment protection. The Dells product life cycle is composed of designing, building, shipping, operating and recycling strategies. All these strategies are described in the next paragraphs. Designing [11] Dell Company follows the ISO 140001 standard for managing environmental impact on the entire product life-cycle. This standard is an environmental management strategy which provides assistants on minimizing the negatively operations effect on the environment (modication of the air, water, land characteristics).

Figure 2. Dell Product Life Cycle Approach [11]. In the design process of the product, the company is strongly taken in consideration avoidance of using materials from the product manufacturing process, which can deteriorate the environment or can damage the human health. Therefore, a strict set of rules were created to eliminate toxic substances and to evaluate environment impact from the substitutes substances. Using these rules,

Figure 3. GHG emissions [11].

IDT:M alardalen University

In Figure 3 is presenting the emissions of GHG during three years. Signicant progress was made in the minimizing of the GHG emissions during the production of the electricity that Dell purchases for its building, and in the minimizing of the GHG emissions done by suppliers, service providers and customers. Shipping [11] Dell Company tries to minimize the impact of the products environmental footprint from the shipping process. In order to do that, they created a strategy called the Three Cs, which raised the sustainability of the product packaging. The Three Cs: Cube, Content and Curb strategy has three directions. The rst direction is trying to introduce innovative materials which diminish the footprint and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The second direction is trying to reduce the packaging volume, and to offer a multi-pack packaging solution which allows shipping for multiple systems in a single box. The third direction is based on the usage of air cushioning and thermoformed high-density polyethylene (HDPE) made from 100 percent recycled content. Operating [11] The main Operating strategy is based on virtualization and cloud computing techniques. Virtualization, basically, is creating for the customer a virtual version of a server rather than actually buying it. Virtualization is helping customers to reduce power consumption, to conserve space and to eliminate physical servers. Cloud computing is also helping customers to save on energy. Recycling strategies [11] Dell Company had implemented several recycling options presented in the following paragraph. Mail Back is offering in 78 countries the free service to mail back the Dells equipment. Dell Reconnect is a program that allows customers from U.S. and Canada to recycle any brand of computer hardware for free in more than 2200 locations. National Cristina Foundation is a program located in U.S., United Kingdom and Canada which receives donation of used computer hardware. In 2011, Dell managed to recycle more than 150 million pounds of electronics from the entire globe. Figure 4 presents the quantity, in kilograms, of recycling Dells products from entire globe.

Figure 4. Worldwide recovery by region [11].

Achievements [11] In the present, Dell managed to get signicant achievements based on its green related to product life-cycle strategy. Among its accomplishments, we count the following: Newsweeks 2010 Greenest Company in America

Extending the number of countries with free recycling (more than 78)

Recycling 288 million kilograms of e-waste

Changing the design of computers, desktops and laptops; this resulted a usage of 25 percent less energy

Reducing the size of product shipment boxes with an average of 11 percent

4.4

Toshibas Resolution

Toshiba Group aims to be one of the worlds head ecocompanies, by minimizing the environmental impacts of their business activities. To achieve its goal, the company developed three green strategies under its new Toshiba eco style brand: Greening of Process, Greening of Products and Greening by Technology [13].

IDT:M alardalen University

is their major facility which manufactures LCD TVs for the European market. In 2011, Toshiba Company completely switched to renewable energy (hydroelectric power) of the Poland facility uses.

Figure 6. Reduction in CO2 Emissions by the Swithcover to Revewable Energy [12]. Figure 5. Toshibas Three Green Management [12]. Figure 5 presents the three strategies of Toshibas resolution as follows. The rst strategy is referring to the impact caused by all the factories owned by Toshiba. The second strategy is focusing on the products produced by the company and their environmental issues. The third strategy is introducing the developing of new and greener technology. Greening of Process [12, 13] The increase of the production causes the incrementing of energy and resources consumption from all the factories owned by Toshiba. Toshiba Group is working on reducing the environmental impacts resulted from the increased production. More specically, Toshiba is concentrating most of their efforts on semiconductor factories which causes half of the greenhouse total gas (GHG) emission. The ultimate goal of Toshiba Group is to accomplish a zero-emission objective in all of their production sites. In more details, they are trying to substitute hazardous chemical with alternative substances in order to minimize the unhealthy chemical emissions. There are three perspectives involved in Greening of Process action. Mitigation of climate change perspective is trying to reduce the use of energy, to introduce the energy-efcient processes for all the Toshibas facility needs, and to shift to low-carbon energy and low GHGs. Effective use of resources perspective is trying to reduce the total amount of waste, to reuse the waste, to collect and recycle the end-of-life products and to reduce the amount of used water. Management of chemicals perspective is trying to reduce the chemical substances used in the manufacturing process, and to introduce alternative substances. In this sense, Toshiba is implementing a plan to shift to renewable energy in their factory from Poland. The factory Figure 6 shows the reduction of CO2 emmision between 2009 and 2011, when Toshiba Company switched to renewable energy in their facility from Poland. Greening of Products [12, 13] The increasing demand for products causes the power consumption and CO2 emissions to increment. In order to provide to the consumer a comfortable lifestyle but also to reduce CO2 emissions, Toshiba Group is aspiring to accomplish the highest level of environmental performances for all products. Therefore, the company is developing environmental conscious products (ECPs) using the following practice: 1. Product planning stage - establish eco-targets to indicate the conditions necessary to gain the highest environmental performance level.

2. Development and design stage - ECP standards are used to evaluate the design of products, taking in consideration resources effective use and chemical managements.

3. Product approval stage - approve the quality of the products from the eco-targets and ECP standards achievement. In this sense, Toshiba developed in 2010 a highperformance notebook PC (Prot eg e R830) which provides outstanding energy-saving performance due to development and usage of the LED-backlit display and power control system.

IDT:M alardalen University

into more issues which can be easier to handle. In opposite, Toshiba Group has only three perspectives, each one managing more issues than in Dells approach. A big realization of Dells Company is the accomplishments they get from the shipping process and from the recycling strategies. Nevertheless, it is appreciated Toshibas perspective based on technology innovation and their goal to create a smart grid for an intelligent type city. In general, both companies have the same main goals. They are trying to minimize the emission of GHG gas, to eliminate the use of PVC material, to decrease of power consumption from their entire product catalog and to recycle their e-waste products. Figure 7. Total amount of waste generated [12]. Figure 7 presents the total amount of waste generated per unit production since 2000. The metals, cinders and sludge waste decreased during 10 years of production, in opposite with the plastics and other (oil, wood, glass, etc.) waste. Greening of Technology [12, 13] Using the technology developed in the previous years, Toshiba Group is trying to provide a stable power supply which diminishes the climate change. More specically, the company is investing in developing a smart grid, which can be the next generation of power supply network. A smart grid is a management electrical grid which connects through a network, power sources (solar, wind, nuclear plants) with power consumers (end users). This system tries to predict power demand or power generation from different places and tries to procure energy from the closest facilities. The smart grid facilitates the effective use of natural power and optimize the proportion between power supply and power demand. Toshiba Groups goal is to create an electrical, water, sewage and transportation systems for a type of intelligent city. In this sense, Toshiba created a research facility at its Fuchu Complex in November 2010, in order to conduct experiments on smart grids. The experiments conducted in this center, research various facilities on supplying and demanding of power in order to make possible the existence of a power supply system which can connect power sources via distribution network.

Discussion and limitations

The authors have the principal objectives in this paper, to investigate the Green IT strategies implemented in computers manufacturing companies. Using content analysis, we investigate the implications from the implementation of the Green IT principles in practice, from the manufacturer and the customer point of view. Going to be green is not an easy task, for every company, to adopt. It involves huge investments of money and other resources, which are used in research, development and implementation of new green processes and products. Nevertheless, all the investments will pay-off on the long time term, with benets for both companies and customers, and will produce a lower environmental footprint. The Green IT practices used by both companies have covered the optimization of IT framework which reduce the energy consumption and amplify the disposal of electronic waste. Based on the data from the CSR reports, we can say that both companies follow the Green IT principles and are involved in researches of new ways to implement these principles into practice. This practice follows some international standards which involve several important environment actions such as reducing of the hazardous material used and nding new substitute materials, minimizing the energy and water consumption and decreasing of GHG emission. From the customer point of view, the consequences from purchasing green products are various. As shown in Dells resolution, the result of manufacturing energyefcient products produces a customer saving of $20 million (the equivalent of 220 million kilowatt hours). Also, the customer benets from the surrounding environmental conditions, since the computer manufacturing companies are producing products with a low impact in various environmental areas (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, polluted water, hazardous waste, etc.).

4.5

Differences and similarities

Dell and Toshiba companies have two different approaches related to Green IT practices. The rst company has a product life-cycle approach with ve directions: design, building, shipping, operating and recycling. The second company has a three green strategies perspective under its new Toshiba eco style brand. Although their strategies are different, mainly, both companies are implementing the same ideas with few differences. Dell, dividing the Green IT implementation into ve perspectives, is splitting the problem

IDT:M alardalen University

Hence, from the results found in our study, we can make several propositions. First, the government should sustain the research and the development of low impact environmental technologies. Also, the government should provide founding to all companies which are interested in Green IT principles, in order to boost the implementation of these principles into practice. The life-cycle product perspective is the best resolution in order to minimize energy consumption. An important responsibility of Green IT principles is the electronic waste decrease. Until now, the electronic waste problem was managed only from the production processes. The usage of several friend environment substances instead of hazardous materials such as PVC or mercury decreased the impact on environment. Further, the management approach related to e-waste should be conducted also, from the customer side. This operation can be achieved through recycling programs such as the programs implemented by Dells company. Using content analysis, the authors presented several Green IT concepts implemented by two major electronic companies. However, there are some limitations associated with our study. The analysis conducted by the two authors, was based on public information shared by the two companies. Further work should cover the empirical verication of the data provided in the CSR reports by the companies. There are other limitations related to the content analysis methodology used in this paper which can be examined in a future research.

[6]

S. Murugesan, Making IT Green, IT Pro, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 12, issue 2, Mar 2010, pages 4 5 D. Wang, Meeting Green Computing Challenges, IEEE Computer Society, Jun 2008, pages 1 - 4 P. Chakraborty, D. Bhattacharyya, S. Nargiza Y., S. Bedajna, Green computing: Practice of Efcient and Eco-Friendly Computing Resources, International Journal of Grid and Distributed Computing, vol. 2, no. 3, Sep 2009 D. List, Know Your Audience: chapter 16, Content analysis, Audience Dialogue Website, 4 Feb 2005, available at http://www.audiencedialogue.net/kya16a.html

[7] [8]

[9]

[10] S. Stemler, PhD., An Overview of Content Analysis, Pareonline Website, Sep 2001, available at http://pareonline.net [11] Dell, Inc., 2011 Corporate Responsibility Report, Dell, Inc. Website, 2011, available at http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/cr.aspx? ck=bt [12] Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba Group Environmental Report 2011, Toshiba Corporate Website, 2011, available at http://www.toshiba.co.jp/csr/en/engagement/report/index.htm [13] Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba Group Environmental Report 2010, Toshiba Corporate Website, 2010, available at http://www.toshiba.co.jp/env/en/report/index.htm [14] Greenpeace International Organization, Greenpeace website, 2011, available at http://www.greenpeace.org

6
[1]

References
S. Murugesan, Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, IT Pro, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 10, issue 1, Jan 2008, pages 24 - 33 Y. Wati and C. Koo, The Green IT Practices of Nokia, Samsung, Sony and Sony Ericsson: Content Analysis Approach, IEEE Computer Society, issue 5 - 8 Jan 2010, pages 1 - 10 S. Ruth, Green IT - More Than a Three Percent Solution, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 13, issue 4, Jul 2009, pages 74 - 78 S. Agarwal and A. Nath, Green Computing - a new Horizon of Energy Efciency and Electronic waste minimization: a Global Perspective, IEEE Computer Society, Jun 2011, pages 688 - 693 N. Bachour, Optimizing the Value of Green IT Projects within Organizations, IEEE Computer Society, Apr 2010, pages 1- 10

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

IDT:M alardalen University