Sustainable IT offers numerous benefits that can help your company become more competitive and environmentally friendly. Here are the key advantages::
Despite these benefits, a survey found that 72% of companies still lack a sustainable IT strategy with clear goals and measures.
Sustainable IT involves implementing strategies that promote a resource-efficient IT infrastructure and software applications. This approach benefits not only the environment but also your business. With sustainability becoming a key factor in consumer purchasing decisions, it's essential for companies to adapt their IT infrastructure accordingly
This article gives you an insight into various fields of action and offers a jump start into the broad topic of Sustainable IT.
As global digitalization accelerates, CO2 emissions are rising steadily, with the IT sector contributing around 2% of the total. This places a responsibility on technology leaders to take meaningful climate action. Yet, only 43% of global managers surveyed are aware of their company’s IT-related carbon footprint. This lack of awareness is set to shrink, especially with new regulations like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This makes it all the more crucial for businesses to address sustainable IT proactively.
According to a report by McKinsey, 84% of global consumers say that sustainability plays an important role in their purchasing decisions. Companies that ignore this risk being at a competitive disadvantage. Now is the time to strategically embed sustainability and ensure long-term business success.
A good starting point is fostering a sustainability mindset. This begins with training and educating employees about eco-friendly behaviors and decision-making, and extends to implementing sustainable business strategies. When all levels of a company embrace an environmentally conscious culture, sustainable choices become second nature.
It’s equally important to communicate and celebrate successes. Sharing progress and milestones not only strengthens employee engagement but also builds customer trust. Transparency and openness about sustainability efforts demonstrate that the company is taking responsibility and actively contributing to a more sustainable future
Another effective way to encourage environmentally friendly behavior is through digital nudging. This technique uses subtle digital cues to guide customer behavior in a desired direction. For example, an online store might highlight eco-friendly products or provide informative prompts about the environmental benefits of certain items, encouraging customers to make more sustainable choices.
The way in which we design products and solutions has a direct impact on our company's sustainability footprint. Even when designing customer journeys, we can ensure that they are resource-saving and efficient - both for the company and for the environment. In this context, “lightweight” means reducing products to their essential functions. When selecting features, we should always ask which functions are actually needed by the user and offer real added value.
This is a central component of the “Sustainable Design Manifesto” - a guideline for the development of digital products and services that focus on people and the planet. The manifesto contains the following premises:
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The “Open” manifesto premise also includes social sustainability. The open online community “A11Y” has developed a checklist that companies can use to check their existing applications for digital accessibility or take this into account when developing new products and services. When companies consider inclusion and accessibility from the outset, they not only fulfill their social responsibility, but also create products that appeal to a broader target group.
Collecting and analyzing sustainability data is not only important due to the mandatory EU directive CSRD, which applies to companies with more than 500 employees, but also for building internal awareness of a company's sustainability status. Visualizing and gathering data is essential to understanding the bigger picture.
These data points come from different areas of the company, including risk management, human resources (HR), legal, information technology (IT), sales and marketing departments. Consolidating this data across many functions can be a challenge, as can identifying the data sources. In addition, a comprehensive insight into the value chains must be ensured, taking into account suppliers as well as consumers and other stakeholders.
Given the volume of data, it's clear that meeting both external and internal reporting needs is a complex and demanding task. This makes it all the more important to establish clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) related to sustainability early on.
The sheer volume of data makes it clear that both internal and external reporting is a complex task. It is therefore all the more important to define clear sustainability targets and KPIs at an early stage. Strong management involvement is of central importance for the entire transformation process. Clearly formulated and communicated goals at management level ensure that the right priorities are set in all areas - be it in product development, resource management or the selection of software providers.
The sustainable procurement and efficient use of hardware is essential in order to reduce environmental impact and promote a future-oriented, ecological IT landscape. Companies should implement circular concepts and pay attention to certification standards for energy efficiency when procuring hardware. This ensures that the devices used comply with current environmental requirements.
Another important aspect is the efficient use of hardware. With a device management solution, companies optimize the use of their devices and extend their service life. This not only reduces the need for new purchases, but also directly saves resources and costs - a clear competitive advantage.
In addition, it is important to define a comprehensive strategy for the reuse, recycling and management of e-waste (such as discarded laptops and cell phones). By implementing such strategies, companies can ensure that discarded devices are either reused or professionally recycled to minimize environmental impact.
Due to the increasing use of online services worldwide, the number of web applications is growing. Sufficient server capacity must be provided for their operation in order to ensure the availability of the data required for the use of these applications. As a result, the operation of web applications can be very resource-intensive. A green hosting strategy offers an approach to counteract these developments with environmentally friendly measures. An evaluation of the setup in the company is recommended in order to identify optimization potential in the data centers and in the cloud landscape. When selecting hosting providers, you can make sure that servers are operated with green electricity, i.e. they use renewable energies.
Are you already using a cloud environment? With the help of GreenOps, you can improve the resource efficiency of your applications in a targeted manner and optimize energy consumption in IT operations. Cloud management tools support you in dynamically adapting your resources - for example through autoscaling, which automatically adjusts your capacities to demand and thus reduces costs.
The established key figure Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) helps you to classify how high the power consumption efficiency of your locally operated data centers is. The integration and use of PUE data in IT reporting provides the necessary transparency. Companies that have only operated local server instances to date are recommended to consider a cloud migration - possible benefits include increased cost and energy efficiency as well as scaling options.
Green coding focuses not only on speed and efficiency but also on designing code that conserves resources, helping to minimize CO2 emissions. Ideally, the environmental impact of software development and execution should be considered throughout the entire development cycle.
The following green coding principles are crucial for sustainable software development:
To demonstrate the effectiveness of Green Coding optimization efforts, tools and methods for measurement must be used. These include assessing energy consumption during code execution and evaluating the efficiency of database queries.
The six steps toward Sustainable IT don’t need to be implemented all at once or in full to have a positive impact on your company. We recommend starting by analyzing where the “low-hanging fruit” opportunities are, so you can prioritize and address them first. It's also important not to underestimate the role of employee motivation and engagement in driving cultural change. The more employees incorporate sustainability into their decisions, the faster your company will achieve its goals.