Archive for May, 2010
8 Ways to Bring Sustainability Into Any Job
Posted on 24. May, 2010 by admin.
1. Get involved in office greening program: Participate in activities that are already happening in your office such as recycling, alternative commuting or employee engagement programs. If these don’t exist, start one.
2. Look at your company’s position on sustainability: Does your company have a sustainability strategy? Does it produce a sustainability report? If it does, take a look at it and see how this relates to your work. If it doesn’t have a strategy, again, why not work to create one?
3. Take a look at your own job: Explore ways to incorporate sustainability into what is already in your job description and the goals of your team. Are there places you could cut waste? Engage your suppliers? Change the way something is designed? You know your job best so you are ideally placed to see how and where changes can be made.
4. Create a coalition: Speak to people in the company to connect with others who are interested or are already working in sustainability. Talk to people outside the company to learn about how they are working on sustainability within their own companies.
5. Support others in their activities: Be supportive of the work that your employees or your colleagues are doing in this area. Give members of your team time to explore sustainability in the workplace or in the community. Volunteer your own time and expertise on sustainability initiatives happening in and outside the company.
6. Share your experiences: Write articles, speak at events and share your experiences in working on sustainability issues in the workplace, the challenges you have faced and how/if you overcame them. Speak up about the areas you think need more work.
7. Be positive, but constructively critical: Rather than saying something won’t work, look at contributing to the discussion and working through ideas to find a solution. Remember, sustainability solutions need to make business sense so make sure you focus on the business case.
8. Stay informed: Look at professional or other organizations to which you already belong to see what they are doing in this area. Pretty much every profession and industry is now getting involved in the sustainability discussion and will have tools and information relevant to the work you do.
As companies get more engaged in the sustainability arena there are more and more opportunities to work from the inside out. Increasingly sustainability will become part of everyone’s job so it is important to be up to date and aware on the issues.
Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/05/19/8-ways-bring-sustainability-any-job#ixzz0oqPE16rX
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Putting Green IT to Work
Posted on 17. May, 2010 by admin.
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a new book, Green IT for Sustainable Business Practice, by Mark O’Neill; the excerpt originally appeared on BusinessGreen, and is reprinted with permission.]
An appropriate mantra for any organization committed to green IT should be “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Organisations should use the green IT program as an ideal opportunity to reduce the amount of legacy IT equipment that is currently installed on their infrastructure.
Replacement of older PCs with energy efficient (Gold EPEAT rating) PCs should be considered, and if this is not financially or logistically viable at least replace any old CRT terminals that are still in use with far more efficient LCD models.
In recent tests, the average energy usage of a traditional 20-inch CRT VGA monitor was sixty three percent higher than a 20-inch wide-screen LCD monitor. Another option for organizations may be to upgrade from a cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) to a light-emitting diode (LED).
Another consideration for organizations is to reduce the number of PCs that exist on their infrastructure by ensuring they only provide one PC per user. In fact, many organizations are implementing PC sharing schemes to reduce the PC estate to less than one PC per user. This initiative is becoming more viable and accepted especially as modern workforces nowadays tend to be more fluid than static and job-sharing schemes become more popular.
Away from the workplace, users are already used to sharing PCs, for example when visiting libraries and internet cafes. It is essential of course that security issues are identified and addressed. Whenever an individual uses a computer, its cookies, browser history and other settings save the information that has been accessed. It is therefore essential that all the files and settings are deleted once the user logs off, and before the next user accesses the machine. To ensure the user’s data and files are kept safe a robust password and data access process needs to be implemented.
Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/05/05/putting-green-it-work-sustainable-business-practices#ixzz0oC2aSKC1
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Online Video the Best Form of Advertising
Posted on 10. May, 2010 by admin.
Video is the fastest-growing online advertising format with estimates of about a 40-percent growth rate through 2010. And the marketers that have taken part in its growth are resoundingly satisfied, according to a recent study from video ad network BrightRoll.
More than 50 percent of the agency executives who participated in the study indicated that online video was the most effective form of advertising, and 83 percent said they were getting more value for their video advertising spend in early 2010 than the previous year. A whopping 94 percent revealed plans for spending more on online video ad campaigns this year than in 2009.
Another sign of video advertising’s maturation in 2010 is the more than 60 percent of respondents that said behavioral targeting increased the performance of their campaigns. The targeting capabilities of video ads were cited as the biggest concern among agency execs in 2009. The biggest concern revealed in this year’s study was maintaining credibility with video ads, with executives saying that videos that start automatically were the biggest detractor.
Source: Web Site Magazine
