Dell Toyiba

ANALYSIS OF GREEN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN DELL AND TOSHIBACOMPANIES

Nuttapon Pichetpongsa

Malardalen UniversityInnovation, Development and Technology

[email protected]

Gabriel Campeanu

Malardalen UniversityInnovation, Development and Technology

[email protected]

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to present the adoption of Green

Principles to practical practice on both local and interna-tional Information Technology industries. The reason of theembracement of these principles in industry is a result ofenvironmental impacts caused by the Information Technol-ogy infrastructure in various areas such as greenhouse gasemissions, polluted water, hazardous waste, etc. Therefore,the Green principles were implemented into each section ofthe Information Technology infrastructure, to reduce thoseenvironmental impact problems. This paper is based mostlyon the data inspired by Dell Inc. and Toshiba CorporationCorporate Social Responsibility reports.The paper focuses on the Green Information Technology inPrinciples and Practices paper and on the content analysisof two companies attitude related to the implementation ofGreen Information Technology concepts. Also, the show-case of similarities and differences between the two Greenpractices is presented. This work is an explorative bound-ary of Green Information Technology or Green Computingin Principles and Practices, which is relevant to softwareengineering, researches and students who are interested inthis domain.

1 IntroductionIn recent years, the Green Information Technology hasbeen implemented with incredible success among compa-nies on both local and international scale. The environ-mental protection aspect has become the adequate corethat many industries are trying to follow in order to bemore environmentally responsible [1]. Computers and elec-tronic machines from all companies are consuming signif-icant amounts of electricity, releasing a carbon dioxide gas(CO2), which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Theelectrical usage is the main cause of climate change [1].Furthermore, the unwanted Information Technology (IT)hardwares also posed to environmental problems duringboth of production and disposal process. The name forthese unwanted hardware equipments is electronic waste

(E-Waste) [3]. Most companies are trying to minimize oreliminate the environmental impact of IT and to support themanaging sustainable environment. In particular, Green ITis about improving or maintaining computing performance,while reducing the energy consumption and the carbon foot-print [7]. However, implementing Green IT principles intopractice involves the usage of many resources. The compa-nies have to spent big amounts of money in order to recon-struct their IT infrastructure.

For the purposes of this research paper, the authors de-cided to select two strong Information Technology (IT) in-dustries as the case study subject: Dell Inc. and ToshibaCorporation. The authors are using the content analysismethodology. They review the data from Corporate SocialResponsibility (CSR) reports of those companies and de-scribe the basic concepts of Green IT applied by the com-panies. The paper also presents the Green IT approach tocomprehensively and effectively point to the environmentalimpact of IT in following: Green use, Green disposal, Greendesign and Green manufacturing [6].

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides anintroduction of Green IT in Practices and Principles. Then,Section 3 presents a review of existing work on Green IT.In Section 4, is presented the content analysis methodologyused and the Dell and Toshibas approaches related to GreenIT. Finally, Section 5 contains discussions and limitationson the papers subject.

2 Green IT in Principles andPractices

Green IT is implemented into the IT framework [5] as setof best practices for optimizing the usage of computing re-sources [5]. The environmental impact towards IT, createsmany issues such as growing accumulation of greenhousegases or modifying the climate world and weather pattern[1]. The producing of electricity is the major cause of theclimate change, because coal and oil are used to generatethe electricity, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) gas during

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the process [1]. The principles of Green IT were creatednot only to protect the environment and to save energy, butalso to reduce the companys expenses on the long-termscenario [3]. The Green IT principles show the conceptsof reducing the environmental impact. There are four keygreen holistic principles, which are focused on differentareas and activities.

Figure 1. Four green holistic principles [1].

Figure 1 presents the four green holistic principles. Theseprinciples are focused on different areas and activities asfollows [1]:

Green use Reduce the energy consumption of datacenters, computers and other information systems anduse them in the environmental ways e.g. virtualization,turning off computer when not in use, etc.

Green design Design energy efficient and environ-mentally sound components, computers, servers andequipments and concern more on the future of elec-tronic parts e.g. eco-friendly design, LED monitor, etc.

Green manufacturing Every process in manufactur-ing electronic components, computers and other asso-ciate subsystems should imply a low or no impact onthe environment.

Green disposal In this practice the company shouldplan refurbishment and reuse of old computers. Also,recycling process for unwanted computers or otherelectronics components should be prepared.

Recently, computer industry realizes that going to be GreenIT is the best direction to get success in both of environ-mental friendly and cost reducing [8]. The companies try toengage those four green holistic with the entire IT life cycle.

3 Related WorkThere are several papers which analyze the Green IT inprinciples and practices. One of them is Green IT in

Practices of Nokia, Samsung, Sony, and Sony Ericsson:Content Analysis paper by Y. Wati and C. Koo [2]. Itinvestigates and expands the concept of Green IT, which isimplemented by four big companies. The authors used intheir analyze the Corporate Social Responsibility reports,which are provided on the companys website. They ana-lyzed the CSRs to find matches between companys GreenIT practice approach and the principles of Green IT fromthe [1] paper. The main difference between Y. Wati and K.Coos paper and our paper is that we analyzed the practicesof Green IT principles in computer manufacturing areain opposite with the phone manufacturing area describedin [2]. The Murugesans paper [1] shows the essentialprinciples and practices, described also in our paper in thebackground section.Most recently work by S. Argawal and A. Nath, presentsa new horizon of energy efficiency and electronic wasteminimization in a global perspective [4]. Their approachfocuses on the study of the issues of climate change andalso explores Green Computing from the business and ITperspective. This paper is related with our essay becausethe Green IT practices in computer manufacturing area, in-cludes energy efficiency and electronic waste perspectives.There are several papers which are related with our anal-ysis, such as [5], [1] or [7]. These papers are presentingthe Green IT principles in practice, more from a theoreticalpoint of view. In our paper, we are focusing more on thepractical view of implementing those principles.

4 Methodology

4.1 Data ConstructionTwo companies were analyzed in this paper, both fromInformation Technology sector. We selected Dell andToshiba Company as our subjects, since these companieswere catalogued as leading companies in terms of imple-menting green technology [14]. Another reason for ourchoice is that these companies have a similar business size.To analyze their green practices, we studied the informationfrom companies sustainability reports. We inspect theCSR reports for 2011; however, for Toshiba Company weused the reports for both 2010 and 2011, since the finalversion of 2011 report is not finalized.

4.2 Content analysis methodologyContent analysis is a methodology used in the socialsciences research for summarizing or compressing largecontents into fewer various aspects. This is a populartechnique used in several fields of research to quantify


and to analyze the relationships of the concepts and wordsfrom available resources e.g. company reports, newspaperitems, interviews, etc. [9, 10] Each company (Dell Inc.and Toshiba Corporate) CSR reports allow the authors toanalyze their content and to provide a transparent evaluationtowards the companies attitude regarding Green IT. Theinformation used from the reports is associated with theenvironmental aspect. Other activities are not reflected inour research paper.

4.3 Dells ResolutionDells attitude related to Green It principles is based onthe product lifecycle approach showed in Figure 2 anddescribed in the following paragraphs. In every phase of theproducts life, new green actions are researched to improvethe environment protection. The Dells product life cycle iscomposed of designing, building, shipping, operating andrecycling strategies. All these strategies are described inthe next paragraphs.

Designing [11] Dell Company follows the ISO140001 standard for managing environmental impact on theentire product life-cycle. This standard is an environmentalmanagement strategy which provides assistants on mini-mizing the negatively operations effect on the environment(modification of the air, water, land characteristics).

Figure 2. Dell Product Life Cycle Approach [11].

In the design process of the product, the company isstrongly taken in consideration avoidance of using mate-rials from the product manufacturing process, which candeteriorate the environment or can damage the humanhealth. Therefore, a strict set of rules were created toeliminate toxic substances and to evaluate environmentimpact from the substitutes substances. Using these rules,

Dell managed to eliminate the usage of mercury fromthe production of laptops display. Also, toxic substances(asbis phthalate DEHP, etc) were eliminated from theplastic production process used in all Dells products. Withthe elimination of mercury from the laptop displays, and thetransition to LED displays, Dell Company reduced also theproducts consumption of energy. Another Dells objectiveis energy-efficient design build in all its products. Theresult of manufacturing products with an energy-efficientdesign, contributed to a customer saving of $20 million (theequivalent of 220 million kilowatt hours).

Building [11] Dell Company tries to minimize theenvironmental footprint of their own facilities. In orderto do that, they set a goal, seven years ago, to increasenon-hazardous waste recycling from their facilities, up to99 percent by the end of 2012. Until the middle of 2011, thecompany managed to reuse 95 percent of their own waste.Along the waste reuse objective, Dell implemented severalprojects to reduce the water consumption. A major issuerelated to the Building strategy is the energy concern. DellCompany is buying green electricity in order to cover a partof their facilities consume. For example, the center fromRound Rock, Texas is using 100 percent green electricitysince 2007. In 2011, a 21 percent of Dells global electricityconsumption was from green power sources.

Figure 3. GHG emissions [11].


In Figure 3 is presenting the emissions of GHG during threeyears. Significant progress was made in the minimizing ofthe GHG emissions during the production of the electricitythat Dell purchases for its building, and in the minimizingof the GHG emissions done by suppliers, service providersand customers.

Shipping [11] Dell Company tries to minimize theimpact of the products environmental footprint from theshipping process. In order to do that, they created a strategycalled the Three Cs, which raised the sustainability of theproduct packaging. The Three Cs: Cube, Content and Curbstrategy has three directions. The first direction is trying tointroduce innovative materials which diminish the footprintand greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The second directionis trying to reduce the packaging volume, and to offer amulti-pack packaging solution which allows shipping formultiple systems in a single box. The third direction isbased on the usage of air cushioning and thermoformedhigh-density polyethylene (HDPE) made from 100 percentrecycled content.

Operating [11] The main Operating strategy isbased on virtualization and cloud computing techniques.Virtualization, basically, is creating for the customer avirtual version of a server rather than actually buyingit. Virtualization is helping customers to reduce powerconsumption, to conserve space and to eliminate physicalservers. Cloud computing is also helping customers to saveon energy.

Recycling strategies [11] Dell Company had im-plemented several recycling options presented in thefollowing paragraph. Mail Back is offering in 78 countriesthe free service to mail back the Dells equipment. DellReconnect is a program that allows customers from U.S.and Canada to recycle any brand of computer hardwarefor free in more than 2200 locations. National CristinaFoundation is a program located in U.S., United Kingdomand Canada which receives donation of used computerhardware. In 2011, Dell managed to recycle more than 150million pounds of electronics from the entire globe.

Figure 4 presents the quantity, in kilograms, of recy-cling Dells products from entire globe.

Figure 4. Worldwide recovery by region [11].

Achievements [11] In the present, Dell managed to getsignificant achievements based on its green related to prod-uct life-cycle strategy. Among its accomplishments, wecount the following:

Newsweeks 2010 Greenest Company in America

Extending the number of countries with free recycling(more than 78)

Recycling 288 million kilograms of e-waste

Changing the design of computers, desktops and lap-tops; this resulted a usage of 25 percent less energy

Reducing the size of product shipment boxes with anaverage of 11 percent

4.4 Toshibas Resolution

Toshiba Group aims to be one of the worlds head eco-companies, by minimizing the environmental impacts oftheir business activities. To achieve its goal, the companydeveloped three green strategies under its new Toshiba ecostyle brand: Greening of Process, Greening of Productsand Greening by Technology [13].


Figure 5. Toshibas Three Green Management [12].

Figure 5 presents the three strategies of Toshibasresolution as follows. The first strategy is referring to theimpact caused by all the factories owned by Toshiba. Thesecond strategy is focusing on the products produced bythe company and their environmental issues. The thirdstrategy is introducing the developing of new and greenertechnology.

Greening of Process [12, 13] The increase of theproduction causes the incrementing of energy and resourcesconsumption from all the factories owned by Toshiba.Toshiba Group is working on reducing the environmentalimpacts resulted from the increased production. Morespecifically, Toshiba is concentrating most of their ef-forts on semiconductor factories which causes half ofthe greenhouse total gas (GHG) emission. The ultimategoal of Toshiba Group is to accomplish a zero-emissionobjective in all of their production sites. In more details,they are trying to substitute hazardous chemical withalternative substances in order to minimize the unhealthychemical emissions. There are three perspectives involvedin Greening of Process action. Mitigation of climate changeperspective is trying to reduce the use of energy, to intro-duce the energy-efficient processes for all the Toshibasfacility needs, and to shift to low-carbon energy and lowGHGs. Effective use of resources perspective is trying toreduce the total amount of waste, to reuse the waste, tocollect and recycle the end-of-life products and to reducethe amount of used water. Management of chemicalsperspective is trying to reduce the chemical substances usedin the manufacturing process, and to introduce alternativesubstances.

In this sense, Toshiba is implementing a plan to shift torenewable energy in their factory from Poland. The factory

is their major facility which manufactures LCD TVs for theEuropean market. In 2011, Toshiba Company completelyswitched to renewable energy (hydroelectric power) of thePoland facility uses.

Figure 6. Reduction in CO2 Emissions by the Swithcoverto Revewable Energy [12].

Figure 6 shows the reduction of CO2 emmision between2009 and 2011, when Toshiba Company switched torenewable energy in their facility from Poland.

Greening of Products [12, 13] The increasing de-mand for products causes the power consumption and CO2emissions to increment. In order to provide to the consumera comfortable lifestyle but also to reduce CO2 emissions,Toshiba Group is aspiring to accomplish the highest levelof environmental performances for all products. There-fore, the company is developing environmental consciousproducts (ECPs) using the following practice:

1. Product planning stage - establish eco-targets to indi-cate the conditions necessary to gain the highest envi-ronmental performance level.

2. Development and design stage - ECP standards areused to evaluate the design of products, taking in con-sideration resources effective use and chemical man-agements.

3. Product approval stage - approve the quality of theproducts from the eco-targets and ECP standardsachievement.

In this sense, Toshiba developed in 2010 a high-performance notebook PC (Protege R830) which providesoutstanding energy-saving performance due to developmentand usage of the LED-backlit display and power controlsystem.


Figure 7. Total amount of waste generated [12].

Figure 7 presents the total amount of waste generated perunit production since 2000. The metals, cinders and sludgewaste decreased during 10 years of production, in oppo-site with the plastics and other (oil, wood, glass, etc.) waste.

Greening of Technology [12, 13] Using the tech-nology developed in the previous years, Toshiba Group istrying to provide a stable power supply which diminishesthe climate change. More specifically, the company isinvesting in developing a smart grid, which can be thenext generation of power supply network. A smart gridis a management electrical grid which connects through anetwork, power sources (solar, wind, nuclear plants) withpower consumers (end users). This system tries to predictpower demand or power generation from different placesand tries to procure energy from the closest facilities. Thesmart grid facilitates the effective use of natural power andoptimize the proportion between power supply and powerdemand. Toshiba Groups goal is to create an electrical,water, sewage and transportation systems for a type ofintelligent city. In this sense, Toshiba created a researchfacility at its Fuchu Complex in November 2010, in orderto conduct experiments on smart grids. The experimentsconducted in this center, research various facilities onsupplying and demanding of power in order to makepossible the existence of a power supply system which canconnect power sources via distribution network.

4.5 Differences and similaritiesDell and Toshiba companies have two different approachesrelated to Green IT practices. The first company has a prod-uct life-cycle approach with five directions: design, build-ing, shipping, operating and recycling. The second com-pany has a three green strategies perspective under its newToshiba eco style brand. Although their strategies are dif-ferent, mainly, both companies are implementing the sameideas with few differences. Dell, dividing the Green IT im-plementation into five perspectives, is splitting the problem

into more issues which can be easier to handle. In oppo-site, Toshiba Group has only three perspectives, each onemanaging more issues than in Dells approach. A big real-ization of Dells Company is the accomplishments they getfrom the shipping process and from the recycling strategies.Nevertheless, it is appreciated Toshibas perspective basedon technology innovation and their goal to create a smartgrid for an intelligent type city. In general, both companieshave the same main goals. They are trying to minimize theemission of GHG gas, to eliminate the use of PVC material,to decrease of power consumption from their entire productcatalog and to recycle their e-waste products.

5 Discussion and limitationsThe authors have the principal objectives in this paper, toinvestigate the Green IT strategies implemented in comput-ers manufacturing companies. Using content analysis, weinvestigate the implications from the implementation of theGreen IT principles in practice, from the manufacturer andthe customer point of view.

Going to be green is not an easy task, for every com-pany, to adopt. It involves huge investments of money andother resources, which are used in research, developmentand implementation of new green processes and products.Nevertheless, all the investments will pay-off on the longtime term, with benefits for both companies and customers,and will produce a lower environmental footprint. TheGreen IT practices used by both companies have coveredthe optimization of IT framework which reduce the energyconsumption and amplify the disposal of electronic waste.Based on the data from the CSR reports, we can saythat both companies follow the Green IT principles andare involved in researches of new ways to implementthese principles into practice. This practice follows someinternational standards which involve several importantenvironment actions such as reducing of the hazardous ma-terial used and finding new substitute materials, minimizingthe energy and water consumption and decreasing of GHGemission.

From the customer point of view, the consequencesfrom purchasing green products are various. As shownin Dells resolution, the result of manufacturing energy-efficient products produces a customer saving of $20million (the equivalent of 220 million kilowatt hours).Also, the customer benefits from the surrounding envi-ronmental conditions, since the computer manufacturingcompanies are producing products with a low impact invarious environmental areas (e.g. greenhouse gas emis-sions, polluted water, hazardous waste, etc.).


Hence, from the results found in our study, we canmake several propositions. First, the government shouldsustain the research and the development of low impactenvironmental technologies. Also, the government shouldprovide founding to all companies which are interested inGreen IT principles, in order to boost the implementationof these principles into practice. The life-cycle productperspective is the best resolution in order to minimizeenergy consumption. An important responsibility of GreenIT principles is the electronic waste decrease. Until now,the electronic waste problem was managed only from theproduction processes. The usage of several friend envi-ronment substances instead of hazardous materials suchas PVC or mercury decreased the impact on environment.Further, the management approach related to e-wasteshould be conducted also, from the customer side. Thisoperation can be achieved through recycling programs suchas the programs implemented by Dells company.

Using content analysis, the authors presented severalGreen IT concepts implemented by two major electroniccompanies. However, there are some limitations associatedwith our study. The analysis conducted by the two authors,was based on public information shared by the two compa-nies. Further work should cover the empirical verificationof the data provided in the CSR reports by the companies.There are other limitations related to the content analysismethodology used in this paper which can be examined ina future research.

6 References

[1] S. Murugesan, Harnessing Green IT: Principles andPractices, IT Pro, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 10, is-sue 1, Jan 2008, pages 24 - 33

[2] Y. Wati and C. Koo, The Green IT Practices of Nokia,Samsung, Sony and Sony Ericsson: Content Analy-sis Approach, IEEE Computer Society, issue 5 - 8 Jan2010, pages 1 - 10

[3] S. Ruth, Green IT - More Than a Three Percent So-lution, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 13, issue 4, Jul2009, pages 74 - 78

[4] S. Agarwal and A. Nath, Green Computing - a newHorizon of Energy Efficiency and Electronic wasteminimization: a Global Perspective, IEEE ComputerSociety, Jun 2011, pages 688 - 693

[5] N. Bachour, Optimizing the Value of Green ITProjects within Organizations, IEEE Computer Soci-ety, Apr 2010, pages 1- 10

[6] S. Murugesan, Making IT Green, IT Pro, IEEE Com-puter Society, vol. 12, issue 2, Mar 2010, pages 4 -5

[7] D. Wang, Meeting Green Computing Challenges,IEEE Computer Society, Jun 2008, pages 1 - 4

[8] P. Chakraborty, D. Bhattacharyya, S. Nargiza Y.,S. Bedajna, Green computing: Practice of Efficientand Eco-Friendly Computing Resources, InternationalJournal of Grid and Distributed Computing, vol. 2, no.3, Sep 2009

[9] D. List, Know Your Audience: chap-ter 16, Content analysis, Audience Dia-logue Website, 4 Feb 2005, available athttp://www.audiencedialogue.net/kya16a.html

[10] S. Stemler, PhD., An Overview of Content Anal-ysis, Pareonline Website, Sep 2001, available athttp://pareonline.net

[11] Dell, Inc., 2011 Corporate Responsibility Re-port, Dell, Inc. Website, 2011, available athttp://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/cr.aspx? ck=bt

[12] Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba Group En-vironmental Report 2011, Toshiba Cor-porate Website, 2011, available athttp://www.toshiba.co.jp/csr/en/engagement/report/index.htm

[13] Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba Group En-vironmental Report 2010, Toshiba Cor-porate Website, 2010, available athttp://www.toshiba.co.jp/env/en/report/index.htm

[14] Greenpeace International Organization, Greenpeacewebsite, 2011, available at http://www.greenpeace.org


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