Carl Weinschenk spoke with Deborah Grove, principal, Grove Associates, a consultancy specializing in green IT.

Weinschenk: Do green ideas, paperless offices and energy efficiency make sense, or are they just a nice idea?
Grove: I am convinced that it makes sense for … the whole value chain management [cycle]. It enables you to bring down the cost of doing business throughout the channel by doing it all electronically. I think it's extraordinary. People my age have talked about the paperless office for 25 years and we still see lot of paper. Some people actually are living in the paperless office. We have a small segment of the population which is 40 doing it. There are a lot of people between 25 and 40 who can envision that kind of life.

Weinschenk: What is an example of how electronic communications can be beneficial?
Grove: [When] shipping containers move across the oceans, and there is so much paperwork. And paperwork is often the reason containers are not unloaded as fast as you want. The paperwork has not caught up with them. The transportation industry understands this now and is trying to understand how to get air freight companies, shipping companies and customers to be moving documents electronically.

Weinschenk: Just how do you get there?
Grove: There's the vision and then the tactics. My vision is to think of electronic management of documents as the 21st century Silk Road. You are either on the road or not doing business. When you are on the road, you can move the products and services around the world. If you are not, you can only do business locally. So that’s a vision statement. People are writing standards to ensure that there is a way for people to do business no matter where they are from. It's consistent with the flat world concept that everyone is equal in cyber space. I think the advent of standards, software as a service, e-commerce and simple shipping mechanisms like those from eBay make it easier to conduct business. I think those all contribute to a new way of doing business. Companies that understand that whole new paradigm and do not try to squish existing technology into the new paradigm are those that will be able to do this at a lower cost and with a lower carbon footprint.

Weinschenk: I guess getting true buy-in to the concept is the key.
Grove: I was at a supply management conference. One of the speakers was from Nike. She asked, "What if we took the attitude that we lease our shoes and they come back to us when the user is done with them?" The answer was that [the issue of] landfills would really drive the design of the shoes. It’s a new way of thinking about every marketing messaging. I don’t need to have toothpaste wrapped in a box anymore. I don’t do business with companies that keep sending me catalogs, since they don’t have my values.

Weinschenk: What should IT be aware of concerning what happens to equipment and other things when they are discarded — the issue of electronic waste?
Grove: I'm more willing to buy new IT appliances if I know the old ones are going to be recycled properly. I need assurances that systems aren't going into the landfills and that everything is properly recycled. The vendors have to assure customers that everything will be taken care of according to regulations and is done conveniently.

Weinschenk: Again, it sounds great, but having it permeate through the business sounds like quite a task.
Grove: I think it’s a two-way street. One is being upfront about the total value of something. A flat screen TV uses a lot of energy. Nowhere is that being talked about. Manufacturers selling them have an obligation to explain the full impact of that kind of TV instead of the old one. We need the opportunity to say we are doing this design with the cradle-to-grave lifecycle in mind. We want to know that because we want competitors to meet us there.

Weinschenk: What kind of questions do you ask prospective clients when you sit down with them?
Grove: What kind of company do you want to have 10 years from now? How would you like to be perceived by the market? How is that different from where you are today? Do you want to be 50 percent more successful than what you just described? What if you are only 50 percent as large as today? What does that do to your operation? And does that change your market? [If you were bigger] would you serve additional markets or more of the same market? If it is an adjacent market, than do you change messaging or does the same message work for the new market? Do you have business processes in place to make that change? Can your IT department enable you to grow on a dime because you had incredible success? If not, how can you set up IT to be ready to be nimble before your competitors figure out what you are doing?

Weinschenk: Your firm aims to do things in an environmentally proactive way. How do the above questions relate to that goal?
Grove: Once I understand their corporate strategy and where they want to be, I say, "Okay, your success at building an IT infrastructure is going to get you there. So let's bring in experts to build IT infrastructure." If they don't say they want a smaller carbon footprint, it's my job to ask them. Do you want it? How can you achieve that? Let's look across the whole company, across the facilities and the marketing, products and services. If they say we don’t really care, I may say that they might want a different consultant. Or I might say let's look at the dollars and say maybe it makes sense to care. Many examples say companies that implement sustainable facilities management are more profitable, are leaner and are riding the crest of the wave of getting good press too.

Weinschenk: What kind of example can you provide of companies that have taken the eco-friendly approach?
Grove: In Silicon Valley, they talk about first-move advantage. People put a stake in the ground and say, "We are going to do this." I think Sun, Cisco and HP did this and they are reaping the rewards. Their learning curves are far ahead of people who started five years later. They are much more effective at sustainability. People who are still trying to figure out whether this makes sense for them aren't reaping the benefits of the initial momentum.