Guide to Green Computing Kendal

You don't need to have seen An Inconvenient Truth or read the latest climate change research to know that the world is facing an environmental crisis. According to the government-commissioned Stern Report, global warming - if left untackled - will have serious consequences for us all: it only takes a global temperature rise of another 2 degrees for between 15% and 40% of species to face extinction. We in the UK might not be in the firing line, but neither can we afford to be complacent. Problems in the world's food production will hit the entire human race, while severe weather and serious flooding may cause billions of pounds of damage in years to come.

So what, you might ask, does climate change have to do with computers? Plenty. According to figures from the ecological analysis firm Best Foot Forward, computers are responsible for 2.6% of the UK's energy consumption. What's more, the PC and consumer electronics industries consume a surprising amount of energy and resources, and are rapidly creating a huge mountain of waste, much of it dangerous. The UN's environmental programme estimates that 50 million tonnes of waste from discarded electronic goods is generated annually and, at the moment, much of this isn't being disposed of responsibly, but being swept under the carpet in the world's poorest countries.

This article has been broken down into three parts, to help you make environmentally sound decisions before, during and after the lifetime of your IT equipment. Whether you're a home user with a single PC or an IT manager looking after a thousand systems, the buying decisions you make and your computing habits can make a significant difference. Buy smartly, use resources efficiently and help to recycle your equipment, and you'll reduce the UK's power consumption and help to cut down that waste pile. Along the way, you might even save a little money.

Before you buy your PC

If you're concerned about the environment, you're not alone -look at the website of any global PC manufacturer and you'll find details of "citizenship" programmes or environmental credentials. Most major corporations have a policy in place regarding energy consumption and waste management in their own production facilities, and most are aware that product recycling and hazardous chemicals are now sensitive issues.

But how do you tell the genuine global warming initiatives from the corporate hot air? Don't stop at the rhetoric, look for detailed reports. Sony, for example, breaks down the environmental impact of its activities into an analysis that covers everything from the CO2 emissions created while transporting its products (695,000 tonnes during fiscal year 2005) to products collected and recycled (30,000). That might be too much information when you're merely deciding whether to buy a VAIO laptop or not, but try to look for the following elements:

Recycling Does the manufacturer make provisions for recycling its own products, or is it merely waiting for the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive to kick in?

Chemical usage Does the company go the extra mile and monitor chemicals used in its products, above those banned by the rather cursory Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive? Does it also monitor the waste produced in its facilities and in those of its suppliers?

Transport Has the company made any effort to replace air freight with more carbon-efficient road, rail or sea networks? Does it discuss CO2 emissions and efforts made to lower them?

Energy efficiency Does the company have policies in place to ensure its own facilities are low on waste and energy efficient? At base level, manufacturing plants should comply with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, but compliance with the Europe-wide EMAS scheme or, for smaller companies, BS 8555, is also a good indication.

Packaging Has the company made any effort to replace harmful packaging materials (plastic, polystyrene) with recyclable alternatives (cardboard, paper)?

These programmes should always be taken with some caution. As Greenpeace International's Iza Kruszewska noted, "Global citizenship and other CSR [corporate social responsibility] initiatives are all voluntary, with companies setting the criteria against which they measure themselves". In other words, the corporations can set themselves soft targets, then fail them without penalty. "At best," Kruszewska continued, "CSR can be a way for companies to lead the way. At worst, CSR initiatives can be a diversionary tactic, used by industry to pretend they're taking action and to avoid regulation." So don't just check the company's promises - try to evaluate its targets, then see how close it gets to achieving them. Above all, don't be afraid to ask questions. If the sales guy at company X doesn't know what materials are used in the system's packaging, ask him to find out. The more these questions are asked, the more companies will think about these issues.

Better still, look for a manufacturer that, like Dell or HP, takes responsibility for its products throughout their lifecycle. The buzzword here is EPR, or Extended Producer Responsibility. The idea is that the manufacturer's responsibility doesn't end when it ships a system; instead, it has to take a long-term view. "You have to look at the product from a lifecycle perspective," said Lena Pripp-Kovac, Dell's sustainable business manager for the EMEA region. "And look at its environmental impact at different stages in that lifecycle."

That's why Dell monitors the chemicals used and waste produced at every stage of a PC's production and offers free recycling on all of its products: it should be "as easy as it is to order a machine" said Pripp-Kovac. Iza Kruszewska agreed. "Greenpeace believes that Extended Producer Responsibility is a more certain way to discern if a company is really 'walking its talk' on corporate responsibility," arguing that "by taking back their end-of-life products" manufacturers will be encouraged to "design cleaner, more resource-efficient products". After all, if you have to recycle something, you're less inclined to use hazardous materials and more inclined to use easily recycled alternatives. HP's UK environmental manager, Bruno Zago, talks of "working towards a utopia of cradle-to-cradle product cycles", adding "we believe that if we've spent the time and invested in designing a product for recycling, we want to get our product back because we know how we've made it and what the materials are".

Standards always help, as does clear information. "People looking for green attributes have a hard time," said Iza Kruszewska. "This is why Greenpeace is asking the top 14 mobile and PC producers to provide better information on their corporate websites." While organisations such as OEKOM in Germany or eco-labels rate products on a comprehensive range of specific environmental criteria, these aren't as tough on chemicals and waste as Greenpeace would like.

Check the chemicals

Why worry about materials? For the simple reason that a surprising number of chemicals used in the production of PCs are toxic and, while this is unlikely to affect you individually, it will affect those who have to recycle or dispose of systems, and the environment surrounding any systems that are dumped, incinerated or sent to landfill. Flame-retardant materials used in some PC cases or components can leach bromine or chlorine into the waste stream, causing reproductive damage in fish-eating mammals, and when burnt give off fumes that can damage the human immune and reproductive systems. Lead, cadmium and mercury damage the human nervous system and are toxic in high doses, while PVC, found in cables and casings, acts as another source of organic-bound chlorine.

Some manufacturers have been taking this seriously for a while - HP removed the most dangerous BFRs from its products nearly ten years ago. However, the introduction of the European Removal of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive in July 2006 has made it an issue for all, banning lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and two types of BFRs from all electronic products, albeit with some exemptions. However, many would argue that RoHS doesn't go far enough. First, there are too many exemptions, and second, it doesn't cover all the materials it could. "Greenpeace wants PC makers to substitute all harmful substances (based on the precautionary principle) and replace them with safer alternatives," argued Iza Kruszewska. "As a start, Greenpeace expects responsible companies to set timelines for substituting PVC and BFRs." Manufacturers including Acer, Dell, Lenovo, LG Electronics and Samsung have done so, setting targets of between 2009 and 2011.

Of course, it isn't easy. Companies can maintain lists of harmful chemicals and stipulate that their suppliers avoid them, but with so many suppliers providing so many components for even a single PC line, ensuring these goals are met is a difficult job. "It's practically impossible to ensure you check every single component in a product," said HP's Bruno Zago. "To check for DecaBDEs you have to practically test the product to destruction." Like most major manufacturers, HP batch-tests products and pushes suppliers to sign a "General Specification for the Environment" that covers these issues, but this didn't prevent a fan containing a DecaBDE from slipping into a Pavillion dv4000 laptop - a fact embarrassingly uncovered by a Greenpeace report last September. "Almost immediately we stopped sourcing that fan," Zago commented, noting that "we will catch an error at some point, but we might not catch that error right at the outset."

Moreover, some exemptions are there for a reason. In the case of lead in solder, for example, it's still allowed in large, mission-critical servers for the reason that it's a tried-and-trusted technology, and that lead-free alternatives can suffer from technical issues that could, theoretically, cause a critical failure. Even this exemption is subject to review in 2010 and, if an alternative is established, may be dropped by 2012. "As an industry, we'd have to work very, very hard to prove to the commission that we haven't found an alternative," claimed Bruno Zago. PVC, meanwhile, still gets used for the reason that it makes PC cables malleable, and less susceptible to "cracking", which might leave live connections exposed.

Buying energy-efficient equipment

So you've established the manufacturer is doing its bit for the environment; now it's time to do yours. Selecting energy-efficient equipment doesn't just decrease your "carbon footprint" - it can save you money long term.

Not surprisingly, the most energy-efficient computer of all isn't a desktop, but a laptop. According to our tests, a notebook typically consumes one-quarter the power of the average desktop system, and its power-saving capabilities are likely to be more comprehensive. The price is no longer prohibitive - even business laptops are cost-competitive with desktops and, thanks to Turion X2 and Core 2 Duo, there's no need to sacrifice performance.

If you must have a desktop, buy sensibly. Look for energy-efficient processors (Core 2 Duo processor or the specially marked energy-efficient Athlon 64 and Athlon X2 CPUs), low-rated power supplies (between 250-300W) and passive or intelligent cooling systems (which alter the speed of fans according to the temperature of the system). You'll not only get a more energy-efficient system, but a quieter one too. If you need more power for video editing or games, a Core 2 Duo processor will provide maximum performance for less drain, and there are settings available to keep down your power consumption. Don't overclock, either - it can dramatically increase the power drain of your CPU.

Think smarter about your peripherals. Buy an all-in-one instead of a separate printer and scanner - you'll only have one power supply to feed, not two. And while replacing CRTs with TFTs makes sense (a 19in TFT consumes less than half the power of its CRT equivalent), bear in mind that a bigger screen consumes more power. That 120W 24in widescreen monster could push you back into CRT territory.

Determining which equipment is most energy efficient should become easier later this year with the introduction of the new Energy Star specification. According to Catriona McAllister, senior consultant for AEA Energy & Environment, the key point is that the new Energy Star label will be more demanding, covering power consumption on (idle) and off (standby) modes, and asking manufacturers to fit 80% efficient power supplies. Current PSUs, often provisioned for worst-case scenario power loads, are so inefficient that only as little as 20% to 70% of the energy consumed is actually utilised. McAllister calls this "a big step in the right direction", stating that "the new revision of the Energy Star specifications has been developed so that only 25% of the market (at time of definition) will be able to meet the requirements. This means that in 2007, the Energy Star label will provide a differentiator for consumers between products on the basis of energy efficiency."

Of course, she adds, it would help if power management was enabled on all PCs when delivered. Why is this not the norm? Partly because, as McAllister admits, "There are technical issues with power management, which need to be overcome through co-ordination between software and OS developers and hardware manufacturers to ensure all PCs successfully go to sleep and wake rapidly when required by the user." Interestingly, for instance, while Dell enables power management on all Optiplex desktops and all its notebooks, less than 15% of the Dimension desktops sold in fiscal 2005 shipped with power management fully enabled. Why? Dell claims a change to standby mode in Windows XP MCE required the end user to physically push the "sleep button to activate standby mode", so it couldn't pre-enable power management.

Carbon-free computing

For the ultimate green PC, energy efficiency is only the start: carbon-free computing is the hot topic. This works on the concept of planting trees to offset the energy used by your PC. It's an idea that's slowly gathering momentum. In October, VIA announced the C7-D: the first "carbon-free" CPU. For every one of the low-drain processors (20W at 1.8GHz) sold, VIA would plant four trees to offset its power consumption. To put this in perspective, had Intel done the same for the Pentium 4 each CPU would need 31 trees planted, according to VIA.

The problem is, as PC Pro's own David Fearon noted (see issue 147, p13), this covers only the energy during use, ignoring that consumed during the processor's manufacture, distribution and eventual recycling. Since the United Nations University estimates that 80% of the energy used in a processor's lifetime is consumed during manufacture, this isn't a minor omission.

Second, VIA's "treemark" is calculated using some hefty assumptions. While VIA's maths assumes 24/7 operation over three years, it also assumes that 27% of that time will be spent in standby mode, 3% in sleep mode, 67% in idle mode and only 3% in performance mode. Use the processor for four years, or spend more time in power-hungry applications, and your CPU won't be carbon-free.

Similar questions dog VIA enthusiast Tranquil PC. This company is about as environmentally friendly as PC manufacturers come - it offsets the carbon cost of the system as a whole against trees planted in Kenya, then does the same for its own manufacturing operations. What's more, by using low-power components, it claims that buying a Tranquil PC instead of another brand can save you approximately £26.40 off your annual electricity bill. This time, however, the calculations assume your system will only be used eight hours a day, with only two hours of heavy workload, and will remain unplugged over weekends. This may be realistic for a business system, and the hours would probably balance out with a home PC, but if you work longer hours or keep the system for longer than the assumed three years, goodbye carbon-free computing.

Complete guide to green computing