As a concept applied to IT, "green" is one of those terms in danger of becoming whatever the marketing departments at hardware and software makers want it to be.

A reasonable person would assume green means "Earth-friendly," implying ecological responsibility. From the IT manufacturer's perspective, going green also provides an inducement for companies to buy new hardware, although that doesn't seem like a very Earth-friendly outcome at all.

Sustainability, on the other hand, is something we can measure and manage. We are sustainable when our use of resources does not permanently deplete or damage our supply, including natural resources, energy, and capital. Though perhaps we shouldn't blame the OEMs for using the Green movement to fertilize their bottom lines, corporate technology users who adopt sustainability as their goal will improve not only their environmental impact -- achieving truly green results -- but their profitability as well.

Correlating Sustainability and Cost of Ownership

Of course, electronics can never be absolutely sustainable. Steel, aluminum, copper, petroleum, and a host of other materials that go into manufacturing IT hardware are not renewable resources. Organizations can become significantly more sustainable, though, according to the choices they make around planning, buying, managing, and retiring their IT assets.

Greater sustainability almost always correlates with lower total cost of ownership (TCO) -- a useful validation for the sustainability of specific activities -- and the high-tech version of the old-fashioned notion of frugality. So behaviors that reduce TCO will likely improve sustainability and vice versa.

It is important to secure senior management support for the effort over the long run, as the payoff horizon for sustainability projects is usually at least as long, or longer, as the typical asset lifecycle. Then the first step is to define explicit policies and set quantitative goals.

Planning for Sustainability

Progress toward sustainability begins at the planning table. Lifecycles should be defined for all major categories of equipment -- the longer the better.

The power and reliability of modern technology allow extension of its productive life much further than in the past. Companies that opt to lengthen lifecycles will significantly reduce both total cost of ownership and environmental impact.

Longer lifecycles make it necessary that organizations plan for reuse, including refurbishment and redeployment, of some assets during their life. A conservative rule of thumb is that any asset idled during the first two-thirds of its planned life should be reused; assets becoming idle during the last third of the lifecycle should be immediately retired. Proactive lifecycle planning ensures that the retirement process is designed to minimize costs and risks, while providing for maximum accountability.

Managing for Sustainability

Asset management is perhaps the capability most critical to sustainability efforts. Waste happens when organizations lose track of assets, allowing some to go idle while buying others unnecessarily.

When assets are difficult to locate, delays increase the cost of retirement, and the lack of inventory control increases the opportunity for a costly privacy breach. And without rigorous asset management, it is impossible to generate solid cost-of-ownership and other metrics that enable sustainability efforts to be managed, and their success measured. Asset management should be considered the foundation of sustainable IT.

When considering new purchases, it is important to buy no new hardware before its time. The OEMs have become adept at arguing for the wholesale replacement of legacy systems using a rationale built around the comparative energy savings enjoyed by new hardware. These arguments rarely take total financial and environmental costs into account, however.

Manufacturing a new PC and monitor requires more than five hundred pounds of fossil fuels and 3,300 pounds of water. Lengthening the lifecycle of an existing system from three to five years will save $700 in monthly amortization expense per $1,000 of original procurement expenditure.

There are few scenarios, if any, where the energy efficiency of new systems will outweigh either the financial or environmental benefits of longer lifecycles. When the time is finally right to purchase new equipment, the most efficient models may be identified on the website for the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT).

The larger the organization, the more likely that at any given time a material number of assets will be idled through employee turnover, project churn, acquisitions and divestitures. A best practice is to maintain a list of models which are qualified to be reused, and to identify a "model stock" quantity to maintain available in a redeployment inventory that is visible and available to the organization.

When a qualified model is idled, it should be recovered for refurbishing as quickly as possible. Refurbishing should include thorough testing, data sanitization, re-imaging, cosmetic restoration, and repackaging. The greatest challenge to an effective redeployment program is not a technical one, but the attitude of end users who are often reluctant to accept a used piece of equipment; therefore, refurbishment standards must be managed to provide virtually a new out-of-the-box experience.

Refurbished equipment available for reuse must be visible for ordering organization-wide, and policy should require that used, when available, always be chosen over ordering new. When quantities greater than the model stock amounts accumulate for a given model, the surplus should be resold immediately to recover maximum residual value. Make sure the redeployment inventory is turning. Never let quantities build to the point they are surplus to needs.

Ensuring Security

No discussion about sustainability and frugality can neglect the contribution of security to cost of ownership. A data breach for a privacy-regulated company is enormously expensive, averaging more than $6 million per occurrence.

Surveys have shown that the majority of breaches result from the loss or theft of data bearing assets, so establishing adequate physical security and maintaining a rigorous chain-of-custody can be rationalized as cost saving measures.

Inventory accuracy is the starting point. Security must work hand-in-glove with asset management to successfully manage the risk inherent in moves, adds, changes, and retirements. The best practice, which few organizations are mature enough in asset management terms to accomplish, is to know what, if any, data is resident on each system -- and whether or not it is encrypted -- so that appropriate measures can be applied. Lacking that knowledge, all data-bearing devices must be treated as if they contain sensitive information.

Giving Assets a Second Life

Your junk may be another organization's treasure, literally. A healthy secondary market for IT equipment is ready to purchase much of what a typical organization will deem "end-of-life," though values decline rapidly.

Assets lose approximately 30 percent of their value upon initial installation, and are worth only 10 percent of the original purchase price on average three years later. Depreciation slows after three years, and most assets will retain some residual value into their fifth or sixth year, and their utility much longer.

For sustainability, it is always dramatically preferable to transfer working devices to new users who will give them further service. Once a device has been decommissioned, speed is of the essence to ensure that the asset is transferred to another user while there is still enough "fair market value" remaining to support the cost of the transaction.

Responsible Recycling

For assets lacking such residual value, accountably recycling devices back to component materials of sufficient purity for use in new manufacturing processes is the only sustainable alternative, but is unfortunately an exception to the rule of prevailing current practice.

As much as 90 percent of most devices by weight is relatively non-toxic, and can be separated for local sale, including steel, aluminum, and most plastics. Toxic-bearing materials, such as circuit cards, must be managed by specialized refiners to isolate toxins such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and lithium into alloys that can be safely reutilized.

Because the logistics component of the recycling process uses far more energy than the material separation portion, minimizing the distance scrap electronics must travel before their reincarnation into Legos and garden shears is a best practice for sustainability. Your recycler should provide reporting that connects the dots along the downstream supply chain between your e-waste and consumer goods. Failing that, and regardless of "certificates of destruction" to the contrary, assume that your e-waste is being exported to a developing country for some combination of manual disassembly, crude refining, and dumping.

Sustaining Sustainability Programs

Even well designed sustainability initiatives will falter without good governance. After initial policies and objectives are set, it is important to measure results and hold individuals accountable for achievement of goals. Fine tuning of policies and procedures will no doubt be necessary. As progress is made, recalibrate and set new goals. Regardless of the starting baseline, continuous, incremental improvement is the best strategy for moving an IT organization toward lasting sustainability.

As progress is made, communication of the good news -- up, down, sideways, inside and out -- is important to maintaining the budgetary and moral support necessary for an ongoing sustainability program.

The metrics should be designed to quantify and support both the financial business case, and to tell the human interest side of the sustainability story too. Make sure all direct stakeholders are completely informed. Tell the end users; tell the board; tell the shareholders and alert the media.

Ultimately the mindset required for sustainable practices must become part of the organization's culture, reinforced at an individual level, and viewed as part of the company's strategic strength. It's just good business.

Robert Houghton is the president of Redemtech, an asset recovery and IT Asset Management company.