Digital Eco-Responsibility

Digital eco-responsibility are the terms we use to designate the methods, techniques, activities and initiatives deployed amongst the teams in charge of the conception, deployment and exploitation of digital informational resources from a sustainable development perspective.

The objective is to understand how to reconcile current and future information technologies with the environmental, social and economic challenges.

Under this vast notion are several underlying themes, more or less mature but henceforth considered in sensibilized organizations. For example:

• Eco-design of digital services in order to reduce their environmental footprint
• Energy consumption control of technologies and infrastructures
• Equipment life cycle control and optimization to reduce electronic waste impacts
• Data protection and cybersecurity of personal informations
• Digital solutions design as a tool toward environment protection
• etc.

The IT sector shares today’s greatest challenges. For example, worldwide greenhouse gases emissions for this sector, as consumed energy, is comparable to that of all global airlines according to recent UN studies. In addition, electronic waste handling is still a global challenge in terms of generated pollution and resource usage. Not to mention the important battles around rare earths, components of our countless electronic devices, and many other natural resources. Social aspects are not to be overlooked with the exploitation of poor populations and lack of social protection for workers in electronic manufacturing plants.

For all these reasons, at Synairgis, we consider that an IT infrastructure, including all its aspects and components (hardware, software, data, etc.) must be eco-conceived and responsibly managed in the same manner as must a building’s infrastructure and its mechanical engineering be, or even as must residential housing construction must be.

How to Take Action?

Digital eco-responsibility relies primarily on the ability for organizations to adequately manage the informational and technological resources required for their operations. Since we can only manage and control what we know, one of the first things to do is, according to us, to maintain an up-to-date technological assets inventory in order to understand their ramifications and characteristics. Then is it possible to consider other, more structuring actions which will have a positive and significant impact in terms of digital eco-responsibility:

• Introduction of eco-indicators
• Definition of governing rules for responsible product procurement
• Revision of equipment evergreening programs
• Definition of architecture orientations aimed at energy consumption reduction
• Power consumption audits (server infrastructure and PCs), and introduction of indicators
• Analysis of the ratio of industry eco-labelling compliant equipments
• etc.