Make Your IT Green this St. Patrick's Day

With many preparing to go green in nearly every conceivable way in honor of St. Patrick's Day, one area that might not see as much "greening" is technology.

No, this doesn't mean you should dunk your notebook computers in green dye. I'm pretty sure that would void several warranties and leave you with a non-functional device. Green USB memory sticks, however, might be a safe and fun alternative.

Bill Burke, CIO at mortgage WR Starkey Mortgage, helped his business go green by reducing the amount of hardware his office threw out.

“Because the [multifunctional printers] weigh approximately 85 percent less than the combination of stand-alones, there’s a significant reduction in material that goes to the garbage heap at the end of a device’s useful life,” Burke said in a recent BizTech story.

Then there's ECOtality, an innovative San Francisco-based company working toward making electric vehicles a mainstream reality. The company uses an Elliptical mobile data center, which is known for its energy efficiency.

“It’s a companywide goal to be smart about energy consumption,” said Charlie Carpinteri, ECOtality’s director of IT and network operations in a recent BizTech story. “It’s our passion.”

So in between rounding up the green outfits, green beads, green face paint and green deviled eggs, think about greening your IT a bit more this holiday weekend. You might just find that green IT leads to its own pot o’ gold.

For more information on green IT, visit the green computing section of BizTech.