Tag: bt

Adobe seems to have no commitment whatsoever to Sustainability

Adobe
Photo credit midiman

I was extremely lucky to be given a tour of Adobe’s triple platinum LEED certified HQ in Palo Alto last year. I video’d highlights of the tour and posted them here. At the time I was extremely impressed with Adobe’s sustainability initiatives.

However, since then I have been more and more convinced that the building is a one-off and that Adobe has no commitment whatsoever, to Sustainability.

Why do I say this?

  1. Adobe’s 2009 CSR report, while slightly better than its 2008 report, it is still a triumph of style over content. There is no adherence to GRI reporting standards, no external audit and no mention of targets set or previous targets reached
  2. No-where on the Adobe site or in its CSR reports (that I could find) does it mention who in the organisation has responsibility for Sustainability. If no-one has overall responsibility for it, then we shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t get done
  3. Adobe’s LiveCycle Enterprise Suite gets a passing mention in the 2009 CSR report when it says:

Global telco’s sustainability reports reviewed

Nature's fragility
Photo credit WTL photos

When I published my review of tech company sustainability reports a couple of weeks back, it was suggested that I should add in telco’s as well. Instead, for clarity, I decided to publish a separate review of telco sustainability reports here.

Company Latest Report Format Remarks External Audit GRI Index CEO involved
BT 2009 Online and PDF Granular links and multiple PDF download options Yes Yes – A+ Rated Yes
Telefonica 2009 PDF Comprehensive document with lots of charts and numbers (Spanish only) Yes Yes – A+ Rated President
T-Mobile 2009-10 PDF In an otherwise good report, it was disappointing to see the Chairman’s involvement was a cut & paste of an online discussion he had about sustainability on another site as opposed to something specific to the report. Also, the fact that it contained a photo of the Chair using bottled waste doesn’t speak well for his commitment to sustainability Limited Yes – A+ Rated Chairman – kind of!
Swisscom 2009 Website Very confusing layout. Very difficult to find any meaningful information No Yes – A Rated No
Vodafone 2009 PDF Very comprehensive PDF only report Yes Yes – B+ Rated Yes
Orange 2009 PDF Very comprehensive PDF only report Yes Yes – B+ Rated Yes
China Mobile 2009 PDF China Mobile is the 1st mainland Chinese co. listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and the thoroughness of this report is a testament to that (in English) No Yes Yes
Telecom Italia 2009 PDF Excellent report with the information well presented and hugely transparent (wrt objectives achieved, objectives missed and targets) Yes Yes Yes
Verizon 2009-10 PDF Good supporting website and report but let down by lack of GRI adherence and no external auditing No No Yes
SK Telecom 2008 PDF Download procedure for PDF is not straightforward and commitment to produce 2009 report by May 2010 has not been met. Also the report is short on numbers and more especially targets. Yes Yes – B+ Rated Yes
AT&T 2008 PDF with options to download individual sections Nicely laid out with goals, numbers and pretty pictures! A very good report – a shame it was only to GRI level C and not externally assured. No Yes C Rated Yes
Telenor No date Online Telenor have a CR section on their site. This section is light on numbers, specifics and targets. No No No
3 (owned by Hutchinson Whampoa) n/a n/a No Environmental or Sustainability site I could find n/a n/a n/a

Some points to note from the review:

Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 02/12/2010

Green numbers
Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

  • Iberdrola Renovables SA, the world’s largest operator of wind parks, agreed to buy Spain’s largest wind farm from Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica SA.

    Renovables, based in Valencia, paid Gamesa 320 million euros ($441 million) for 244 megawatts of power capacity in Andevalo, Spain

    tags: iberdrola, iberdrola renovables, gamesa, Wind farm, greennumbers

  • IBM recently ran a ‘Jam’ – an online discussion – on environmental sustainability and why it is important for CIOs, CEOs and CFOs to address it. The Jam involved thousands of practitioners and subject matter experts from some 200 organisations. It focused primarily on business issues and practical actions.

    Take a look at the check list below and it becomes rapidly apparent, C-level management need to tackle the issue before it is foisted upon them.

    IBM’s Institute for Business Value will fully analyse the 2080 Jam contributions, but this is the essential CIO checklist derived from comments made during the Eco-Jam.

    tags: ibm, ecojam, eco jam, cio, greennumbers

  • Data centers are, thankfully, getting a lot of attention when it comes to making them more efficient. Considering that roughly 60% of the electricity used at a data center goes to keeping the servers cool, focusing on smart cooling tactics is essential. HP has taken this to heart and has opened it’s first wind-cooled data center, and it’s the company’s most efficient data center to date.

    In this piece, HP claims that their data center is the world’s first wind-cooled data center – I’m not sure just how valid this is as I have heard BT only do wind-cooled data centers!

    tags: hp, bt, data center, datacenter, wind cooled, air cooled, greennumbers

  • “Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years.

    The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, will say that the ­coming crisis could be even more serious than the credit crunch.

    “The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” Branson will say.”

    tags: richard branson, oil crunch, peak oil, virgin, greennumbers

  • “Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished making it much harder to grow crops around the world, according to a study by the University of Sydney.

    The study, reported in The Daily Telegraph, claims bad soil mismanagement, climate change and rising populations are leading to a decline in suitable farming soil.

    An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world’s farming land “moderately or severely eroded”, the report found.

    Soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes, in Europe 17 times faster and in America 10 times faster.

    The study said all suitable farming soil could vanish within 60 years if quick action was not taken, leading to a global food crisis.”

    tags: greennumbers, soil, topsoil, soil fertility

  • In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion.

    tags: chevron, ecuador, greennumbers, amazon rainforest, amazon, toxic waste, pollution

  • Indian mobile phone and commodity export firm Airvoice Group has formed a joint venture with public sector body Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam to build 13GW of solar and wind capacity in a sparsely populated part of Karnataka district in south west India.

    The joint venture is budgeting to invest $50 billion over a period of 10 years, claiming it to be the largest single renewable energy project in the world.

    tags: greennumbers, india, airvoice, solar, wind, renewables, karnataka, renewable energy

  • Using coal for electricity produces CO2, and climate policy aims to prevent greenhouse gases from hurting our habitat. But it also produces SOx and NOx and particulate matter that have immediate health dangers.

    A University of Wisconsin study was able to put an economic value on just the immediate health benefits of enacting climate policy. Implications of incorporating air-quality co-benefits into climate change policymaking found coal is really costing us about $40 per each ton of CO2.

    tags: greennumbers, coal, sox, nox, particulate matter, greenhouse gases, health

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

by-sa

BT get a clue?

Dennis Howlett has two interesting articles today on BT! Think about that for a sec. If you are Irish and you saw someone say that there were two interesting articles on Eircom you’d have to sit down for a while you’d be laughing so hard.

Dennis’ two articles are about a new SaaS offering from BT called BT Workspace. No, seriously!

As Dennis said:

BT Workspace is an all-in-one-eat-all-you-like offering that provides a number of the tools SMBs need to collaborate with others in their business ecosystems. It is a first of a kind service from a major telco in the UK and represents an important milestone in the creation of business infrastructure services.

Now there are qualifications – it is not hugely innovative, it is missing large swathes of functionality, but with someone like BT pushing this they can make SaaS mainstream in the UK in no time flat.

Dennis tells me there is more in the pipeline, watch this space.