Dell gets carbon neutral

Greenbiz

ROUND ROCK, Texas — Dell’s three-tiered plan to neutralize its carbon footprint has reached its goal five months early and saved the company $3 million, Dell said Wednesday.

“It’s a piece of our overall strategy and one we’re pretty excited about,” Dane Parker, Dell’s director of environmental, health and safety, told GreenBiz.com.

The company announced last year its goal of becoming carbon neutral by late 2008. Since then, it focused on reducing energy consumption and buying renewable energy before offsetting the remaining emissions.

Overall, Dell lowered total energy demand by about 5 percent through efficiency projects such as lighting upgrades, HVAC retrofits, tweaking building temperature settings and shutting off computers not being used.

This is great news for Dell, and highlights what can be achieved through looking at the way you do business. Even the simple things, shutting down idle computers, looking at your supply chain or your facilities can not only allow your business to become more energy efficient, it can make the way you do business more efficient and effective.

That Dell have made efforts in their carbon footprint is great in the respect that not only does it show how an enterprise can achieve this, but what the benefits of doing so can be. It also highlights the green IT message financially and environmentally which has to be a good thing for the end user.