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Onus lies on firms to go green

Report says firms must familiarise staff with environmental policies

Employees need more environmental leadership if businesses are to reduce power consumption successfully, according to research published last week.

The survey by vendor Logicalis says 85 per cent of employees switch off their home PC when they have finished with it, but only 66 per cent turn off work machines after use.

‘These figures exist against a background where over 50 per cent of employees acknowledge that their organisations are wasting energy and 70 per cent admit they feel a responsibility to be saving energy at work,’ said the report.

In instances where organisations have environmental policies in place, more than half of staff either do not know what it is or do not know what role they can play in implementing it.

Toby Kaan, IT manager at telecoms regulator Icstis, who has also signed up to our Green Computing Charter, says it is essential to constantly remind staff of their green responsibilities.

‘We have put up posters with facts that stick in the head, and the IT department puts out a monthly newsletter with a green section in it. We also have a ‘green champion’ who reminds people about switching of IT equipment,’ said Kaan.

Icstis has developed its own script to automatically switch off equipment at the end of the day.

Fellow charter member HSBC has also been using automated shutdown systems, called Nighwatchman from vendor 1E.

Matthew O’Neill, head of group IT distribution systems at HSBC, says the bank constantly encourages staff to switch off.

‘The biggest single thing we can do is to switch equipment off,’ he said. ‘We have hundreds of thousands of desktops, and leaving them on requires air conditioning, which hugely contributes to energy losses.’

Figures released by the Carbon Trust before Christmas show that failing to turn off equipment over the festive season cost UK businesses £6.2m a day and 550,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will have been needlessly emitted into the atmosphere.

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Onus lies on firms to go green

Report says firms must familiarise staff with environmental policies

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