Happy Earth Day...are we as green as we think we are?

In honor of Earth Day this year I'm looking for vendors and channel partners who do it right. The "Green" thing that is. About 18 months ago (before the entire economy imploded) all we heard about was going green. Some companies did it right like IBM lowering the energy expenditure of their products and finding lower emission options for transport. While other companies such as Dell were using green as a marketing tactic talking about skipping their old piecemeal ways and shipping entire infrastructure solutions to end users in one big box. This sounds like a worthy green initiative, but don't the pieces come to Dell as a bunch of little boxes first? Partners were also up in arms as putting it all together is part of the value they add. In Dell's defense that was over a year ago and they've done some great things since then. The important thing is that Green initiatives are actually doing some good!

There are other positive signs that green is still top of mind. The Interop conference in May is dedicating an entire track to Green IT with speakers from Deloite, Forrester, Alcatel Lucent, and Juniper.

So that's what some of our market leaders are doing. Now what are the rest of us doing in our daily lives to make a difference? Think about using public transportation whenever possible, reusing grocery bags, getting a BPA free water bottle instead of buying water bottles every day, or buying locally grown produce whenever possible. There are many more things you can do, find out more here.

Wherever you are get out and enjoy Earth Day!