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I’m a big fan of “disclosure” and have been a long time advocate of laws like California’s SB1386 (or for a more formal explanation here) which calls for disclosure of information security breaches that have resulted in leakage of personal data.

Disclosure of company financial performance; transparency into the individual expenses and financial interests of elected officials (and non elected decision makers); the state of corporate risk exposure; and a whole list more are also examples of public and private sector governance and reporting arenas where transparency has proven to be a positive influence on behaviour. Unfortunately, we have learned the importance of disclosure mainly through the numerous examples of the exact opposite. All of which resulted in ultimately ill-advised, unethical, and illegal behaviour by individual, corporations and government continuing due to a very real lack of transparency.

On the sustainability front, the corporate social responsibility report has long added marketing gloss and positioning around a company’s social, environmental, equal opportunity and financial efforts. The CSR report is the Vogue edition of the reporting minutia that is the raft of environmental reports that a company may need to file (depending on their industry) - marketing selected data excerpts dressed up with photographs of happy, successful people doing happy, successful and socially responsible things.

Carbon (emissions) disclosure joined the fray a few years back. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is probably the best known, and the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment is a looming requirement for many businesses. Small businesses however will be exempt, while “one man band” home workers such as myself are considered “off the radar”.

However heating, cooling, lighting and generally keeping an an individual’s accommodation habitable and pleasant are collectively the single largest factor in the person’s overall ecological impact, aside from their daily travel and long distance travel habits. So it makes sense to improve the operation and design of our housing stock in these areas all the time in order to reduce the ecological load. It has also been asked (reasonably) whether there is a real net benefit in terms of lower emissions from home-working an employee versus providing them office space in the traditional way, and as a home worker this is a very real factor for me.

Whether it is or it isn’t, figuring it out is perhaps helped by disclosure and transparency. To that end, I’ve jotted down a summary of the ways that I personally attempt to reduce my own ecological footprint. So far, this is qualitative in nature only. A more quantitative calculation (and plan) is something I must get to. What I do today is by no means perfect, however its the best compromise available to me as a worker and as an individual (and as a family member) for the moment.

A later quantitative analysis will provide I hope some good insight as to where I can make further material changes in my own behaviour and resource consumption choices. Along the way I hope to also gain through experience a better understanding of the net benefit of technologies and services that claim to assist in reducing our individual and collective ecological impacts.

You can read a qualitative statement from me regarding my own guiding principles that I follow in an effort to minimise and continue to reduce my own ecological footprint here.

Nod @ DT.

Its becoming more and more common for retail shoppers to consider the providence of the fresh and packaged food they buy. From Fairtrade chocolate to Free Range chickens to Organic vegetables it is obvious that consumers have an increasing awareness of the importance of the upstream supply chain, and the methods and ethics applied in the manufacturing of the goods they purchase. In addition to the organic and Fairtrade labels, more and more attention is also now being given to “local” sourcing. Arguably this is a return to the traditional rather than an entirely new phenomena. In years gone by the choice of produce that was grown within a ten mile radius was more a reflection of what was on offer, rather than a deliberate lifestyle choice. Now however, it is being recognised that economically and environmentally, it makes sense to purchase products that are grown and manufactured in the local region.

Outside of the kitchen we use high-falutin’ terms like “long tail, highly distributed supply chains” to refer to the process of sourcing the components that go into various manufactured goods from a range of different countries, the shipping back and forth during the build phase, and the eventual shipping of the finished product to a distant market. All that shipping around the place adds to the environmental footprint of a manufactured product - potentially adding another two and half sizes to the existing environmental footprint of a product, no matter how careful is the thought that goes into the product design and component choices.

In the data centre and across the office computing estate it will become increasingly important to focus on the embodied environmental footprint of the product. Right now most of the industry noise is on the energy consumption during the in-use phase of the product’s life. However where a product is designed and built and from what components, and how it is packaged and shipped will increasingly become a consideration as the buyers of IT equipment become more sophisticated in their understanding of the true meaning of “sustainability”.

It’s worth it therefore to consider the credentials of local, specialised PC and Server manufacturers. All other things being equal (price, performance, reliability, warranty and other features) a locally built and sourced item of hardware may well turn out to be a better choice in overall sustainability terms. While no-one ever got fired for buying Lenovo/Dell/HP/etc, it may just be a smarter choice to look beyond the usual crop of 800 pound gorilla box shippers.

Shop local…live light…