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New ITU ‘Sustainability Toolkit’ for the ICT sector
Green standards highlighted as tools to achieve
greener corporations
Geneva, 21 September 2012 – ITU has published a new guide to
aid the shift towards a more sustainable ICT industry. The “Toolkit
on Environmental Sustainability for the ICT Sector” provides detailed help
on building sustainability into the management and operations of ICT companies
through the application of international standards and best practices.
The toolkit provides a standardized method to report on sustainability
performance, which is increasingly required by customers, investors, governments
and other stakeholders. It will also enable companies to manage and improve
their own sustainability performance.
The toolkit was produced in partnership with over
50 ICT
companies, UN agencies, environmental organizations, and research institutes.
It was launched during
ITU Green
Standards Week in Paris, 17-21 September, an event advocating the creation
and application of ‘green ICT’ standards for boosting environmental efficiency
across all industry sectors.
ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré said, “International standards are
globally agreed best practices or benchmarks in development. Standards will
however only deliver promised benefits if implemented effectively, and this
Toolkit is an essential companion to the environmental sustainability standards
developed by ITU-T, ITU’s Standardization Sector.”
The toolkit provides a set of sustainability requirements for ICT companies
to allow more objective reporting in the following areas:
- Sustainable ICT in corporate organizations, looking
primarily at four ICT areas: data centres, desktop
infrastructure, broadcasting services and telecommunications
networks.
- Sustainable products, through the use of environmentally
conscious design, development and manufacturing principles, from
a product’s birth to its end-of-life treatment.
- Sustainable buildings, focusing on minimizing the footprint
of buildings through the integration of sustainability
considerations within the design, construction, use and
de-commissioning phases; considering that ICT companies operate
facilities demanding large volumes of energy at all life-cycle
stages.
- End-of-life management, covering the various end-of-life
stages and their accompanying legislation, and providing
companies with guidance on the environmentally-conscious
management of end-of-life ICT equipment.
- General specifications and key performance indicators
(KPIs), matching environmental KPIs to an organization’s
strategic targets, and exploring the development of standardized
processes to ensure KPI data is presented in a form most useful
to management.
- Assessment framework for environmental impacts, explores how
various standards and guidelines can form part of sustainability
frameworks tailored to each organization’s objectives and
desired sustainability performance.
The Toolkit will also be a useful guide for experts working within
ITU-T Study Group 5,
the ITU group charged with the development of global standards in this arena. It
is available for download
here.
For more information, please contact
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Toby Johnson
Senior Communications Officer
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