Carbon dioxide emissions

One can chart the evolution of the high performance façade, by first examining the older, more conventional façade. Until recently, it was most common for a building to have single- or double-glazing, moderate to large window or glass areas, little or no sun shading, and little or no capture of daylight for interior use. Instead, energy-intense HVAC systems moderated temperatures and fresh air, while artificial lighting blanketed interiors with required light levels. Emphasis was typically on minimal code compliance.

As a direct result, solar panels began sprouting on the roof tops of stores, car dealerships, office buildings and other commercial enterprises. The lesson? In our contemporary energy economy, promise finally leads to practice – when the financing is right. By the EU implementing market driven mechanisms that give a price on carbon emissions, it allowed private investors, government bodies and industries to allocate funds and factor the cost as part of the costs of operating.

The key to change is, much like supply and demand in Economics, understanding the needs and wants of the variable that needs modification. In this case, we are looking at the manufacturers; the simple truth is that all these factory owners see are dollar signs. And at the moment, asking them to invest large sums of money from an already recession-damaged cash drawer on expensive machinery to replace machines that already work is, in their eyes, riddled with red flags. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? And if it ain't broke, definitely don't fix it for twice the cost!

By placing an economic value, and price on carbon emissions some evidence suggests that the implementation of carbon trading has resulted in a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the first trading period or phase 1 (January 2005–December 2007). What type of market-driven mechanisms were employed? Could the North American economy adopt a similar scheme effectively?

Bringing two-way "Smart Grid" communications and monitoring capabilities that enable electric utilities to route power in more efficient ways, including remote energy management and control of appliances and other networked devices, support for bidirectional power sharing for new alternative energy sources and, through smart metering, more efficient energy use in residential and commercial buildings.

To create a high performance building, architects and engineers select from among these sustainability practices those that are best suited to the particular building’s intended use, occupancy, design, siting, configuration, and expected life cycle.

Forest stewardship council

Because glass can be endlessly recycled back into its original forms and uses, the glass industry benefits from substantial sustainability benefits, such as minimized raw material use, lowered energy demand, lowered CO2 emissions, heightened manufacturing efficiencies, and lowered eventual product costs. With expansive recycling efforts nationwide, America’s glass container industry is now at the point of fully 50% recycled content in its annual production.

There are currently numerous systems or protocols in use for measuring the performance of a particular building or its component materials, products, assemblies, systems or appliances. The LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of United States Green Building Council (USGBC) is perhaps the best and most widely recognized. Others include Green Globes, Green Seal, Green-e, Green Advantage, the EPA’s energy star program, the EPA’s WaterSense Program, the Sustainable Forest Initiative of the forest stewardship council (FSC), and many others.

It is for this reason that there has been increasing pressure placed on retailing giants such as Wal-Mart, Target, Macy's, and Kohl's to manage the carbon emissions of their supply chain. As the buyers that fund the manufacturing sector, their regulations and terms of business carry much more weight than government sanctions do or would.

Most of these measuring and rating systems score points for common ‘sustainability’ practices: fuel and energy reduction, water conservation, waste reduction, carbon footprint reduction, indoor air quality improvement, increase in insulative qualities, increase in air-tightness, use of daylighting, use of rapidly renewable resources, local sourcing of materials, and so on.

AT&T Internet Data Centers are 28 percent more efficient than the industry average, made possible by best practices in cooling system design, advanced airflow, high- efficiency lighting, data center automation and more. Additionally, AT&T is a contributing member in the Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.

At level 3, there is a clearer understanding and awareness of what sustainability really means to the organization. A detailed action plan has been created and communicated to employees, customers, and all other stakeholders. Larger projects within the initiatives are beginning to get traction and see results.

Composting can also be the first stage toward more sophisticated waste processing technologies such as Anaerobic Digestion, and take us toward a much more sustainable carbon economy which many see as the intermediate step civilisation needs to go through before entering the age of the hydrogen economy.

As if often the case, financial innovation is as game changing as technological advancement. We may have the smart boxes to revolutionize the way we use energy, but if utilities and consumers can’t pay for them, they offer little good. The solar energy sector provides a good example. For years we saw little installation of solar panels on commercial buildings, despite enormous information produced by the industry about solar’s value.

Power distribution units

Having worked with manufacturers in China for some time now, focused on sustainability in the supply chain, I can say with certainty that there is a great deal of animosity among factory owners and managers towards the sustainability initiative. While there are several promising cases of vendors embracing the increasing global emphasis on greener production, they are indeed the minority. It is more accurate to say that factories will simply comply to meet the minimum requirements asked of them by their customers, and grudgingly at that.

Within a high performance building façade, every single one of that façade’s components — as well as all of the various building systems lying behind and supporting that façade in one way or another — are designed in concert, synergistically, to maximize overall performance.

As a roof wears, its ability to reflect heat from the outside and contain heat on the inside weakens. The asphalt granules on shingles not only protect the roof from harsh weather conditions, but they also help to reflect outside heat from your home. And from an inside perspective, a weakened roof is more susceptible to seeping the home’s temperature controlled air to the outside.

Even customers who deploy and manage their own IT infrastructure within AT&T data centers can realize energy savings when compared with running that same equipment in their own data center. These savings result from the reduced overhead associated with running cooling systems as well as core power infrastructure such as transformers, switch gear, uninterruptible power supplies, power distribution units and other components.

The resulting fluctuations in temperature will cause the climate control system to operate more than necessary. Anywhere from 20-30% of heat exits a home through the roof, and with climate control system accounting for a large percentage of the monthly electric bill, it’s a necessity to make this figure as low as possible.

Educational works in an area of social reform that has traditionally been resistant to attempts at measurement of the quality and effectiveness of its activity. Outputs are often measured only in terms of the programmed logic itself or in vague terms. Part of this is due to the complexity and cost of measuring the impact of capacity raising initiatives, part perhaps a negative incentive not to address the issue for many apparently good reasons.

The city had suffered a downgrade in its credit rating, and there were concerns about what kind of message was being sent out to investors. The reason that food policy was ultimately accepted as a municipal function in Vancouver was because it was aligned with pre-existing policy directions and organizational expertise in sustainable development rather than as a tool to address social justice concerns like hunger and food insecurity. In this sense the vagueness may mean that sustainability can come to be a bland metaphor for long term viability but can also lead to the implementation of more radical policies.

Data backup services

Here’s a great (relatively) new green product for use in our sustainable future: recycled glass + concrete. Glass is a particularly attractive and useful material. Made from the all natural ingredients of soda ash and sand, and rendered in all of its myriad shapes, colors, textures and applications, it becomes one of our most widely used materials for consumer products and construction alike. Glass is also the only material generally recognized by the U. S. Federal Drug Administration as safe for all food and beverage contact. Americans have come to increasingly rely on the presence of safe, colorful, attractive, useful, dependable glass throughout our environment.

Integrated Client Networking - a utility-based networking solution that includes a full set of advanced network features packaged on a per-port basis. • Managed Storage - hosted servers that can connect to partitioned disk resources provisioned on multi-tenant storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) platforms. data backup services - efficiently back up data residing on hosted servers to common tape and disk platforms as an alternative to using dedicated backup infrastructure.

The lack of direction at national level over what is meant by sustainability and which policies could be considered sustainable mean that definitions and the strategies for implementing 'sustainable' urban regeneration have tended to reflect the political and philosophical position of those posing the definition and enacting the regeneration.

Robinson, however, writes that this may be a strength, that a constructive ambiguity can lead definitions to emerge from attempts to implement sustainable policies rather than defining it from the beginning. For example, Mendes (2005) studied how food policy is used to promote social sustainability in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver adopted a food policy for the poor in December 2003. However, there were concerns about the appropriateness of such a policy in a city committed to competitiveness and perhaps unable to assign resources to an activity not seen as part of mainstream urban governance.

So the typical measurement parameters for high performance cluster about matters of human comfort (such as heating, air conditioning, air quality, light quality, sound quality, water quality, comfort, convenience, ambience, etc.) and matters of long-term economy and sustainability (such as initial cost, energy efficiency, fuel efficiency, resource scarcity, resource efficiency, renewability, operational efficiency, maintenance, etc.).

Two important concepts employed in determining high performance are embodied energy — the amount of energy ‘embodied’ in a given material or product via bringing it to the point of use, through extraction, reclamation, transport, processing, sale and distribution, etc. — and life cycle analysis (or LCA) — the process of analyzing all the costs of a material, product or assembly from its ‘cradle to grave’, i.e. from its point of extraction from raw resource materials to its deposition in a waste stream, or its recycling or reclamation to another use.

Procter and gamble

AT&T's comprehensive suite of Managed Hosting Services allows customers to tailor their IT configuration and scale across AT&T support teams, operational toolsets, service platforms and data centers. Server Management - many of AT&T's hosted solutions include the latest energy- efficient servers that typically deliver more processing power per watt. • Server Virtualization - allows customers to consolidate physical servers with the potential to reduce their associated power, cooling and space requirements.

The high performance building façade is one in which all of the latest design evolution and technological advancement is brought to bear on a structure’s outer skin. That outer skin is, of course, intended to serve many functions. It keeps bad weather —cold, heat, rain, snow, wind, lighting, humidity, dirt, debris — out and good weather in. It provides view and ventilation, as well as shading, and mitigation of both a day’s and a season’s fluctuating temperatures.

In most instances, its design is also intended to convey a certain image or identity or stylistic stamp. How that outer skin is designed and constructed can also have a significant impact on a building’s total annual energy consumption.

Publicly available statistics on the matter are divided, but the manufacturing sector, that is, the factories that produce and make all the products you and I purchase from stores, is arguably the largest contributor of ghg emissions. It is a clear fact that energy production leads that category but in order to reduce energy demand, you must find what is demanding it; understanding how it is used is where inefficiencies can be ousted.

This bill changes that by making it possible for companies to offer equity-based crowdfunding opportunities to investors and startups to spur capital formation without involving the Big Banks. Those include GE, Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, procter and gamble, Ford, Pepsi, and Unilever. In their public statements the term “sustainability” resonates. Since 2005, when the scheme was introduced 15 countries were in the European Union, now that number has grown to 27, and is to grow more with the inclusion of non-European Union countries Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein to join the scheme also.

“There is a lot of opportunity to learn from experience, and tapping into private sector sources of funding is likely critical for scalability,” Bell said. In other instances, utilities finance on-bill programs through Community Development Financial Institutions or by leveraging government loan through agencies like the USDA’s Rural Utility Service. So it’s going to take some experiment and innovation for on-bill financing to achieve scale.

Innovation sector

AT&T Compute as a Service - a virtualized computing environment that lets customers directly control their IT resources and pay for consumption on an hourly basis. AT&T Storage as a Service - an elastic, virtualized data storage that automatically scales up or down to whatever size the customer may need, and is billed based on the amount of storage used.

However, regardless of the influence, I would argue that it is undeniable that global warming has sparked the innovation sector in a highly positive way. It also stands to reason that there is no wrong in attempting to reduce pollution and find increasingly efficient methods of doing any and all of what we do.

First and foremost, it makes it much easier for small businesses and entrepreneurs to seek capitalfrom individual public investors in very small amounts, and without all the regulation and oversight of the SEC. (Note: these regulations are good and important when we’re talking about international mega-corps and billions of dollars in securities. But when it comes to the local solar company or mom and pop bakery down the street, the rules should be different).

Educational approach addresses this problem partly by working with the existing organizations that provide education and training to the target groups most influential to the reform process. In this way funding volatility does not undermine the survival of the capacity raising activity. Educational networks provides a series of services and products to the networks that lower the cost to the network of developing new capacity raising tools and shared teaching resources.

Another big benefit of this bill is that it begins the important process of legitimizing the crowdfunding industry and creating a legal framework for companies to utilize it safely. Until recently, crowdfunding was more of a donation process, in which individuals offered money but enjoyed no hope of financial compensation if the idea was successful.

So composting is a good way to divert waste from landfill, but is there real demand for the huge quantities that could be made from the very large proportion of our municipal solid waste which is organic? No, there are good reasons for concluding that there will never be a large enough demand for it from farmers and gardeners, because there is a huge amount of organic waste in our rubbish from potato peelings to newspapers, cardboard, and even our old non-synthetic clothes.

Along what parameters do we measure ‘high performance’? Usually, we measure along those parameters that have an immediate and direct impact on buildings’ users and their wallets. For example, we desire good quality lighting because it can make us more efficient, happier, less tired, with less eyestrain. But we also desire good quality lighting because it can be provided at lower cost of energy, fixtures, lamps and maintenance.

Building roofs

As our cities build higher and higher, building façades play an increasing role in energy consumption and conservation relative to building roofs and sites. And, as we spend more and more of the time of our lives within mid- to high-rise structures, the comfort zones behind those building façades become increasingly important. For many designers, architects and builders today the dual forces of energy conservation and user comfort draw increased scrutiny to the performance of the building façade in mitigating the bioclimate.

At first sustainability was viewed as an opportunity for large businesses, but it is vastly approaching a necessity, available for everyone. For something to be sustainable it simply means to have the ability to last for a long-term. Decreasing the amount of energy consumption prolongs the life of the energy resource and having more durable building materials decreases the frequency that they need to be replaced (not to mention more cash in your pocket).

Currently, throughout the trades of architecture, design and construction, there are no absolute standards, nor minimum or maximum measures, for what constitutes higher or better performance in a building. A structure may save 10% — or 30% — of annual electrical consumption. A water heating and distribution system may conserve hundreds — or tens of thousands — of gallons annually. All measurements are relative, and, to use a sports analogy, ‘the goalposts keep moving’.

We’d like to make whatever performance improvements we can, readily and at relatively modest cost. As fuels and energy become more scarce, and more in demand, and thus begin costing us more and more, we desire ever higher building performance. We therefore evolve from high performance buildings to higher performance buildings, and then to highest performance buildings. Meanwhile, each new technological advance in design, construction and materials pushes ‘highest building performance’ to a new plateau.

Steel’s greater strength also offers other sustainability advantages over wood. Its ability to achieve greater spans and greater spacings results in less material used, and less material transported to the construction site. As steel floor systems can be shallower than those of wood, building heights can be concomitantly reduced, resulting in a diminished overall building envelope. That decreased overall surface area translates to lower material costs and lower eventual energy use for heating or cooling. Steel is an inert material, having no toxins, and off-gassing no volatile chemicals. It is not susceptible to rot or termites.

In addition to dedicated hosting services, AT&T provides a range of utility- and cloud- based solutions that give businesses greater flexibility, speed and control over their IT infrastructure and allow them to better match capacity with application demand. These services include: AT&T Synaptic Hosting - a fully managed, utility-based solution that provides configurable capacity as well as near-real-time bursting to accommodate variable demand or peaks in user traffic.

Service platforms

While eco-socialism is anthropocentric and humanist and rejects the preservationist's mystification of nature they could not be characterised as advocating the long term viability of the status-quo. They argue that humans are not a pollutant, they are not destructive by nature but the prevailing economic system causes them to behave that way. The answer is to reconnect with nature by re-appropriating collective control over our relationship with nature through common ownership of the means of production (Pepper 1993).

The key to becoming sustainable as individuals and as a society is our own willingness to change and to be creative. Permaculture is a design system that guides us to build and manage sustainable living and working environments in which all of the elements overlap and interrelate to create a functioning whole. Combining our knowledge of ecological principles with our earth-friendly technology we have only to succeed in achieving a more sustainable lifestyle today, and a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.

At this level, management agrees that it is time to look at sustainability as a business strategy. Management begins to see a solid business case for why sustainability makes sense in their organization and management begins defining their strategy for sustainability. Short-term, measurable results start being obtained.

It was not long ago when the word 'sustainability' held little reference to environmental obligations. Perhaps used to describe long run business budgeting or perhaps the vitality of a country's politics, but it wasn't until the green revolution that it became aligned with ecological responsibility.

Hosted solutions let customers tap into AT&T's multitenant service platforms, which provide each customer with a logically partitioned slice of the underlying shared physical assets. Leveraging virtualization and multitenancy, customers can right size their consumption of network, processing and storage resources, often with less cost and waste than the previously underutilized, dedicated infrastructure.

With the advent of global warming and the increasing emphasis on human effect, a spark had set the metaphorical fire under bureaucrats, corporations, and the individual to shape up and reflect on how one coexists with the only planet they'll ever live on. Now, whether global warming is an inevitable natural occurrence or whether it is human caused is a subject of sore debate.

Some would say that it is the fault of the gluttonous diet of the first world for luxury items, which create a ripple effect on green house gas (GHG) emissions down the supply chain to manufacturers globally. Others would challenge this loudly and explain how we are just along for the ride in a natural cyclical event of Earth.

Chemical fertilisers

What is the easiest way to divert organic waste away from landfill, and close a lot of landfills for good? The answer to this is composting. Composting is the natural way to bring left-over organic material back into the nutrient cycle. It also replaces chemical fertilisers and improves the quality of the soil, reducing crop pests, and retaining more moisture in the soil which then means that less watering is needed.

At the heart of creating a sustainable business is to assure that future generations will not be impacted or compromised by the practices of today. They do not limit their planning or corporate strategies to the present or even the immediate future, but look and plan far enough ahead by using conservation techniques, being mindful of human rights and being socially and environmentally accountable to give the generations in the future the same opportunities and advantages that people have in the present time.

With more and more businesses taking on the ideals of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, the impacts made today should not impinge on our children's or their children's rights to enjoy nature and a pollution-free world.

AT&T helps businesses build and operate their IT infrastructure more efficiently by employing virtualization technology both in AT&T data centers and at customer locations. The AT&T Global Network, which incorporates layered network-based protection, allows customers to bridge these environments together, providing flexibility in where and how to deploy IT capacity to meet evolving business demands.

However, there are perspectives in the conservation strand of thought that would not be characterised as seeing sustainability as compatible with long term viability of current economically focused interpretations of urban regeneration. Eco-socialism argues that the economic crisis we are facing is the result of a crisis in capitalism. O'Connor's (1998) second contradiction of capitalism suggests that sustainable development under capitalism is an oxymoron as development success measured in GDP terms leads to negative environmental effects such as pollution, congestion, and stress on water reserves, Shiva observes that “Nature shrinks as capital grows” (1992 pp.189).

Perhaps you have run across the phrase ‘high performance building’ in your various forays into sustainability, environmental awareness or green design. But just whatisa ‘high performance building’ and how do you create one?

First, one must understand that ‘high performance building’ is a relative descriptor. It simply refers to a building that offers higher or better performance than another, usually older or more conventional, building. But, exactly how much higher or better? And along what parameters?

Carbon dioxide emissions

Once acetylated, the radiata pine provides all of the dimensional and durability benefits described. It also performs better as a thermal barrier than virtually any other wood. Finally, as it has taken on no toxic chemical or treatment, acetylated radiata pine will remain, throughout its 50+ year service life, safe for humans, pets, and virtually any use to which it may be applied. One of today’s leading producers of acetylated wood, Accsys Technologies, markets their product as ‘Accoya Wood’.

While increased efficiencies can be shown to exist in many cases, the critical point in determining environmental impact is the net reduction in carbon emissions rather than energy savings. Depending on the location of the server, carbon dioxide emissions can range from a low of 0.03 pounds CO2e/kilowatt hour (kWh) in Idaho to a high of 2.15 pounds CO2e/kWh in Wyoming with a U.S. average of about 1.34 pounds CO2e/kWh. Understanding the locations of the servers being taken off line and the hosting servers is critical in determining the carbon emission savings that result.

The capacities to sustain such efforts are fostered by involving the institutions and key staff in the knowledge creation and organizational learning process from the outset. Interventions in capacity raising are nonetheless often costly. The knowledge that is contained in the events often decays quite rapidly unless regular resources sustain it.

In its 2011 survey of 185 companies spanning 32 industries, A.T. Kearney found that 90 percent now frame that old-line procurement activity as “supply chain management” and have integrated it as part of the overall business strategy. It’s also gone high-profile. The decisions made and how they are executed are being monitored and measured by consumers, investors, national and international regulators, and environmental and human-rights activists. No surprise, more and more companies have gone public in a big way about how they manage their supply chains.

Many of the most common vertical-axis wind turbines today employ a distinctive H-shaped blade and arm assembly, with three such assemblies radiating about a center pole. This design is a lift-based turbine, meaning that in addition to capturing kinetic wind energy, the turbine compounds that energy via the wing-like lift of its blades.

The precisely engineered, prefabricated, modular and ‘kit-of-parts’ characteristics of such flooring systems make them quick and predictable to install, and result in a high quality dependable performance. The greater spans possible and greater fire-resistivity attainable with steel joists systems compared to wood framing make such systems quite attractive for larger scale construction.

Greenhouse gas emission

At $0.14 per kwh, the LEDs will consume $51.45 worth of power over their lifetimes, compared to $68.60 for the CFL’s and $318.50 for the incandescents. The emissions trading scheme is employed in Europe. America could function with the ETS or a hybrid scheme. The carbon tax will be implemented in Australia in 2012, which hasn't received a great response. The US had a Chicago climate change exchange which is now defunct.

There are many reasons to replace your roof, siding, and other exterior parts of your home. Often these reasons are to resolve such problems as a leaking roof, discoloring of the shingles, damaged or warped shingles, loss of protective asphalt granules, cracked or faded siding, or simply that you’re not satisfied with the overall look of the current color scheme. Many of the benefits received from replacing your home exterior are realized as being a solution to a visible problem, but there is another benefit that is difficult to detect.

Besides the most obvious reasons to replace your home exterior there is one more, to improve your home’s sustainability. If your home exterior is built with outdated or worn down materials, it is likely that it doesn’t contain the more sustainable materials available today and your energy consumption is higher than it needs to be.

Also, there is opposition from the Republican Party and if there isn't support from the top, then carbon trading or carbon tax cannot be sustained. In January 2005, the European Union greenhouse gas emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) commenced as the largest multi country, multi sector GHG emission trading scheme in the world. The EU ETS is a result of the European Union pushing ahead of the rest of the world in trying to cap carbon dioxide emissions within its own expanding borders as more countries become members of the European Union.

Businesses that promote corporate social responsibility are conscious of the environmental and social impacts that their business makes. They promote public transportation such as riding bicycles to work or sometimes businesses will offer their employees subsidies or incentives to use buses, trains, trolleys or car pools.

Acetylated wood offers further sustainability advantages. Because it is the acetylation process that provides much of the dimensional stability and durability, acetylation can be applied to any wood, including those that can be rapidly regenerated, i.e. those that quickly and less-expensively provide wood volume. Radiata pine, for example, can grow faster even than bamboo, and, in commercial timber farming operations, can provide greater wood volume per acre than almost any other species.

Vertical axis wind turbines

With greater dimensional stability comes longer service life of paints and coatings, as they no longer must stretch and flex with the moving wood. Maintenance of the wood is thus reduced. And, since the removal of water also means the removal of a food source for insects and micro-organisms, the wood becomes much more durable. Building products of acetylated wood have been shown to reach effective service lives of 50 years or more in exterior above-ground locations, and of 25 years or more in contact with the ground.

When we talk about sustainability in business, it means making buildings '˜green'. Green buildings are those manufactured with recycled materials or materials that won't have a significant environmental impact. It also refers to using sustainable processes by using energy efficiently by utilizing solar power or windpower, cutting back on heating or air conditioning by using window treatments or UV reducing film over the windows, reducing and reusing waste materials such as trash, paper waste or recycling aluminum, glass and plastics.

By using sustainable landscaping such as xeriscaping and native plants that are designed to thrive in the local area without additional care or water, helps reduce impacts to natural resources by cutting back on water and pesticides.

Logically enough, the ideal placement locations for vertical axis wind turbines in urban areas are upon the tallest portions of buildings, at the leading edge or ‘prow’ of the building relative to the strongest prevailing or sustained winds, and out of the wind shadow of any nearby upwind obstructions. Concerns involved with the locations of wind turbines include their appearance/unsightliness and the structural support required. Noise is generally not an issue for vertical-axis wind turbines, as they are typically very quiet.

Depending on the desired performance characteristics of the floor/ceiling assembly, its total construction might also include sound, thermal or fire insulation, blocking or fire-stopping, resilient mounting channels for floor or ceiling finishes, acoustic isolaters, concrete topping, tile, carpet, hardwood, as well as a variety of embedded mechanical or electrical components, such as ducts, conduits, piping, fixtures, etc.

The basic idea behind virtualization is to transfer and consolidate processes into a centralized server or hosted server environment that consists of physical infrastructure that is shared through secure virtual partitioning and that can be run more efficiently than the customer's existing data center. What's more, hosted service environments are often much more likely to incorporate upgraded technology faster than would be the case with a customer-provisioned data center, thereby yielding even greater efficiencies.

Preserving human dignity

The practice of preserving human dignity and rights means not using products that are made in '˜sweat shops', using child labor where the rights of children are not considered or obeyed and employing a diverse group of individuals that eliminates prejudice and discrimination against all races, age and gender.

Throughout Europe all nations are committed to the processing of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to divert as much of our organic waste as possible away from landfill. This is a high priority for the United Kingdom if we are to reach Government recycling targets which are designed to ensure we comply with required landfill diversion rates as set by the EU Landfill Directive.

LED bulbs - the paradigm is shifting - I bought some bulbs from Cree and Lighting Sciences, sold under the “ecosmart” ™ brand from Home Depot. The Lighting Sciences bulbs will go into my bathroom. The CREE bulbs will go into the bedrooms, family room, and the kitchen. Over their 35,000 lifespan, each LED bulb will outlast 14 or 15 incandescents, or 4 or 5 compact flourescents and will use 16% of the power of the incandescent bulbs or 75% of the power of the compact flourescents.

At this level, an organization begins to recognize that something needs to be done. Perhaps outside forces such as industry regulations or stakeholders’/stockholders’ concerns are driving some action; however, there is no real strategy in place. In fact, if industry standards are driving whatever sustainability action currently exists, the organization is most likely acting out of shear conformance.

The sustainable steel joist floor begins with lightweight structural steel joists. These typically have formed channel or tee edges at top and bottom, separated by a thin sheet web, punctuated with holes for the routing of mechanical and electrical components. Joists are spaced frequently and uniformly, and are held in relative position to one another by snap-in bridging that spans between successive joists, ‘bridging’ them together and stiffening one to the next. Then floor and ceiling surfaces are applied, straddling the bearing edges of multiple joists.

Virtualization optimizes the use of physical computing and networking hardware through software that improves utilization, reduces cost and saves energy. According to a recent Forrester Research survey, nearly half of U.S. enterprises have implemented some form of server virtualization to address utilization rates and drive efficiencies from a more consolidated server population.

In simple terms, the acetylation process transforms the free hydroxyl groups naturally present within the wood into acetyl groups (which are also naturally present, though in an initially lesser quantity). The elimination of the free hydroxyl groups means the elimination (or severe restriction) of the wood’s tendency to absorb and lose water. The wood therefore achieves greater dimensional stability, as there is little or no water movement to cause swelling, shrinkage or warping.

Vertical axis wind turbines

Difficulties hampering the use of small-scale wind turbines in cities include a) the roughness of the urban terrain and skyline, and the resultant effect on winds, b) high directional variability of winds, c) greater wind turbulence, and d) the more complex resulting wind flow characteristics. Vertical-axis wind turbines have a distinct advantage in such environs, as they are omnidirectional, whereas horizontal-axis wind turbines must face the oncoming wind to capture energy. Areas having ‘urban heat island’ effects show increased wind speeds as well, further improving the prospects for urban wind turbines.

The UK government adopts this sustainable development focused, anthropocentric approach to urban regeneration. They believe that sustainable development must “ensure a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come” (DETR, 1999). They have set four objectives aiming to ensure sustainable development. However, the three environmental objectives are vague whilst the fourth is more directive in committing to the maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth. This suggests that the UK government has adopted a 'weak' or 'light-green' interpretation of sustainability allowing the long-term viability of economic growth to be balanced against the environmental objectives.

Chemically modified wood is wood that has been impregnated with a benign chemical substance, then heated to cause chemical changes to the wood that result in similar improvements in dimensional stability and durability. Acetylated wood is a chemically modified wood, one altered via the impregnation of liquid acetic anhydride under heat. Since all woods naturally contain a certain amount of acetyl groups — the chemical compound central to the acetylation process — nothing new or toxic is being added to the wood by this chemical modification.

Current utilization rates for data center servers, storage and other assets are as low as 6 percent, and facilities utilization rates average less than 60 percent, according to the GeSI report. The key to realizing increased IT and data center efficiency potentially resides with current trends toward the adoption of hosted services (outsourcing and cloud computing), server and storage virtualization, and low-energy cooling as a means to replace less-efficient data centers and application services, deliver business continuity and address demand elasticity.

Furthermore, acetylation alters the chemical structure of the wood and is irreversible; the acetylated wood will never leach or give up its treatment. And, since acetylation fully penetrates the wood, there remains no untreated wood to be exposed by any cutting or machining. The wood is treated uniformly to its core.

The first metric of sustainability is demand, both by the university lecturers, as well as by students, career professionals, and governments. If demand is high and is seen to be usefully met, the institutional, human and financial resources needed to meet it are more likely to be mobilized over time.

Steel joists

Clearly, in a resourcefully strained world we need to think about environmental and social responsibility.” The "high hats" for recessed lighting cost $25, each. These are equivalent to 65watts. The other bulbs cost $8. These are equivalent to 40 watts. They are, however, much brighter. All are built to fit into a conventional fixture. I think they're called "Edison" bulbs. LEDs are better than the next CFL. CFLs are - were - a transitional technology.

Steel production also typically draws on both post-industrial/pre-consumer material — usually recovered from the waste of manufacturing or fabrication processes — and post-consumer material — most often recovered from the waste of an end user or consumer. As the latter waste is more highly credited under LEED (under the assumption that one is helping the planet to a greater degree by making use of everyone’s eventualwaste), steel offers a greater sustainability advantage than some other materials. The steel typically used in making structural steel joists for construction incorporates just about 90% recycled content.

According to a recent data center study released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, by 2020, data centers could surpass the airline industry as a top GHG polluter. The GeSI report estimates that the number of data center servers will grow at a 9 percent annual rate worldwide to reach 122 million in 2020, up from 18 million in 2002, helping grow IT sector emissions at a 5.7 percent compound annual rate, while driving the sector's overall contribution to global CO2e emissions from 1.3 percent of the world's total today to 2.8 percent by 2020.

Mebratu (1998) writes that the definition of sustainable development given by the Brundtland Commission (that sustainable development “meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (WCED 1987 pp.23)) based on need satisfaction provides the basis for the establishment's thinking on sustainability. The Brundtland Report adopted the stance that continuing economic growth and environmental protection are compatible and the only viable possibility (Leist and Holland, 2000).

Thinking '˜green' certainly is not a new concept, but it is a growing one. Since at least the 1960s, people have been recycling, reusing and conserving. There are also those people who are socially conscious and have practiced their social responsibility as part of their lifestyle. Lately, the concept of sustainability and corporate responsibility are key concepts that are built into businesses and corporate development.

They are designed to create the better usage of resources, produce less pollution, and preserve human dignity and rights. This can be done by using recycled products and materials, purchasing fair trade products, buying inventory from socially responsible companies that do not pay their employees substandard wages or benefits, andrecycling waste products such as paper or paper goods.