Our IT team have a series of green projects that have already been completed or currently in progress. These projects not only modernise our IT infrastructure and processes, but also help contribute towards achieving our sustainability targets.
You can find the green IT projects that are being undertaken by our IT team below.
Automatic shutdown of desktop PCs out of hours
We've all done it, you might leave work and forget to turn off a light, plug or even your work computer. Thanks to automation, a process is running daily across the college domain network to shutdown computers that are left on and are not in use after 10:00 pm. This helps reduce unnecessary power consumption and our carbon emissions.
Installing new interactive displays/boards in classrooms
Across our entire campuses, new large and interactive screens have been introduced in the college's classrooms to replace old projectors, speakers and boards. The new screens provide a better teaching experience, reduce power consumption and reduce materials required for old teaching boards. The new screens are compliant to the power consumption standards and ship with eco modes enabled by default.
Replacement of old desktops and laptops
Old computers are a cyber security risk to the college as they are no longer supported by suppliers. Furthermore, old computers consume more power than that of new computers due to inefficiency in processing data and the use of older technology as well as physical design.
Microsoft Teams Telephony
The college is currently in the middle of a major project to replace an older telephony system for making and receiving external and internal voice calls to an on cloud solution that is integrated with Microsoft Teams. The new system helps elimates the need for physical desk phones that require additional power source to function, whether that's socket power or Power over Ethernet (PoE). By using Microsoft Teams, this is run through an existing desktop PC, laptop or mobile device.
Replacement of legacy systems
IT Infrastructure is always changing and our IT team have been migrating several legacy systems to modern cloud solutions, removing old on-premises systems to reduce power consumption and carbon emissions in our own data centres.
Decommissioning old physical servers
Removing old physical servers that are no longer required due to IT infrastructure modernisation. Furthermore, new virtual on-premises and/or on cloud servers are built to replace old servers to reduce power consumption and carbon emissions. Virtualisation allows for running multiple systems on a single host and cloud deployments leverage other provides such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services which are moving towards 100% renewable energy to power their data centres.
Sustainable printing
Replacing old multifunction devices (MFD) with newer ones that are compliant with power consumption standards, while also reducing the number of MFD devices overall, as part of a sustainable printing strategy.
Sustainable procurement
During our acquisition process for new IT systems and equipment, as part of the tender process we ask specific details around sustainability to gauge the environmental impact working with a new supplier or procuring a new system would have. This works in hand with our sustainability strategy trying to reduce the amount of carbon we emit and energy we require for certain equipment.
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment recycling (WEEE)
As old hardware and equipment gets replaced, we are environmentally aware of the impact when disposing of our old electronic and electrical equipment. This kind of waste cannot simply be put in the recycling bin, so we have established a WEEE process which ensures this is managed with environmental impact focus.
