So you are feeling a bit guilty about that entire carbon footprint you create aren't you? Me too. And probably like me you try to do little things to help out here and there, yet you find it furiously frustrating to do the right thing. So instead you do what I do, you give it your best shot and go to bed feeling like it's really someone else who is screwing things up.
For example, at home I recycle. I take a painstaking (almost militaristic, if you were to ask the family) amount of time and effort to make sure all things cardboard or paper end up in the proper recycling bin, as I do with bottles and cans and a somehow self-multiplying number of wine bottles. I lug bin upon bin out to the curb, feeling as though I must be doing something right, even if those bins sit next to 3 enormously ridiculous barrels of waste (my family might set a waste manufacturing record). I leave feeling that at least I did something, only to return after a hard day's work to find half of the cardboard still sitting there, normally with a little note saying "too big" or "not folded/wrapped properly" or some other lame pathetic excuse. Why you ask? Because the recycling company doesn't get paid for what they pick up – they get paid for their "run". If they pick up too much, they have to dump out their load before finishing their run, which keeps them from the bar I suspect, and as such, any excuse to not pickup recycling helps their incentives. I have battled the town to no avail. Have spent hours cutting cardboard to precisely 2'x2' squares and tying them up in pre-recycled hemp based string while missing work videotaping them not taking my stuff away. I am living a Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in real life. I've created more carbon yelling at the town than the recycling guys could offset even if they did take the stuff, which they won't.
When the incentive doesn't align with the mission, you can't expect to ever reach a happy ending. It's like having an MBO for backing up. Who cares about backing up?
In IT it's no different. Putting fluorescent light bulbs throughout the data center may make you feel great, but if you think that is going to get you a hero's reception you are probably mistaken. (Don't get me going on fluorescents either, they are supposed to last 8000 years yet mine blow up much more often than regular, hence making them cost 4X more in real life, not to mention they destroy the earth in the landfill, etc. I think fluorescents are the scam of the modern era. There are always those who will pray on the fear and doubt of society.) If your corporate "green" initiatives are in fact, important (read: the CEO actually cares) and there are real business objectives around those initiatives (read: we want to build a jet engine that doubles the power output on 25% of the fuel consumption in 10 years), then changing light bulbs won't get you promoted – but showing how changing those light bulbs will mean you can power more systems that can cut the development time of those engines by 2 years will.
Aligning IT with the business on one hand has never been more necessary – and our green data shows that the two couldn't be any further apart – and it couldn't have a better topic on which to do so. The only green that really matters is the green color of money. The rest is nice, and should matter more, but without the attention of the bank it's just to atone for some of the damage we have done. Process changes will save more power and cooling than anything else you can inside the average data center. We use the term PCSE – power, cooling, and space efficiency. What's more efficient than not powering, cooling, or housing something? Nothing. So stop keeping a million copies of the same persistent (non-changing) data and magically you'll dramatically improve your PCSE. Go a step farther and tell your boss and their bosses how by doing so, you not only saved the company money every day, and you helped reclaim valuable data center space, but how your actions are going to help meet the overall company green objectives of making more money faster – and then you'll find your budget growing along with your status.
Show IT how to map themselves into what is really important to the business long term and you are showing the business that it should give you bigger piles of money.
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