Over the past few years we’ve seen a growing concern when choosing ‘green’ products, and it isn’t just for everyday-use products. For those of us in charge of running an IT department, or any business for that matter, it includes the hardware asset management strategies we establish for our business that must be environmentally friendly.
While the greatest factors of selecting the best IT asset management strategy remains the same — your organizational objectives, you must also consider the environmental impact of the technology you use. For purposes of this post, we are going focus on the main reasons you should switch to ‘green hardware asset management.’
Why Choose Green Hardware Asset Management?
We all know the importance of a data center in today’s IT-driven world. There may be many reasons to move from an on-premise data center and migrate to a virtual center, including social responsibility, cost, and environmental impact. Before you consider this change, it is extremely important to ensure that this transition is done correctly. Going green is a good strategy, but it’s equally important to consider data security before migration. Professional data center decommissioning is the easiest way to ensure smooth transition of your IT hardware assets. It will also improve the sustainability of your assets and maintain data security.
Sustainability: Here’s How it can be Achieved?
With the growing number of data centers in the world, power consumption has also increased exponentially. It takes a massive amount of energy to operate a data center on a daily basis. In fact, it can be the equivalent of energy consumed by a mid-sized city. Sadly, Washington state is the only state in America that has adopted a sustainable approach to running data center operations.
A switch to a renewable source of energy comes with two benefits — it reduces the emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and reduces your overall cost as the resources being used are comparatively less expensive than traditional options. Seattle, Washington uses hydropower for electricity generation, but hydropwer is currently not available in most cities across the U.S. Areas located far from hydropower plants must consider switching to other renewable and cost-effective options, such as solar energy or bio-energy.
Manage Server Upgrades
Upgrading servers frequently is an important step to ensure that you are able to meet peak efficiencies, and remove the IT assets that are no longer useful. There are two sides to upgrading the server. If we look at it from an environmental perspective, using the latest and newest technology means you can perform various operations with minimal power consumption. At the same time, throwing away the existing hardware assets means a considerable amount of electronic waste collected in a landfill, which can be extremely dangerous to the environment.
Reuse, Redeploy, and Refurbish
Is there any way you can reduce the e-waste from the data centers? Like other wastes, IT hardware assets can be recycled. You don’t have to throw them straight into the trash. You have the opportunity to reuse, redeploy, and refurbish these assets once they reach end-of-life. If you are familiar with the data destruction process, you may already know it’s possible to sell your old IT assets once the sensitive data has been completely erased.
Recycling or reusing these assets, especially the ones that are in good shape, can add money to your bottom line and save the environment from a lot of e-waste production. The data decommissioning industry creates the largest amount of e-waste annually. This waste stays in landfills, affects the environment, and has a serious impact on our health. By using the three R’s – refurbish, redeploy and reuse, you can significantly reduce your carbon footprint and save the environment from electronic waste.
In Conclusion
If you’re looking for a professional to help with your next data center decommission, reach out to the experts at OceanTech. As a leader in IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) and data center decommissioning, it is vital that we meet or exceed all industry standards and data destruction regulations. We do this by maintaining R2:2013 Responsible Recycling, ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System and ISO 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System certifications.
OceanTech believes that reuse is the best form of recycling and we follow a strict “no-landfill” policy. We use best practices for environmentally friendly and responsible recycling.
