Earth Day is starting to feel like just another holiday created to sell a lot of stuff. Our email inboxes have been bombarded over the past month with announcements from traditional tech companies touting their eco moves. As the coordinator of the first Earth Day, Denis Hayes, tells the Wall Street Journal, Earth Day has become “like Americans who drive their SUV to the supermarket — and then grab a canvas bag from the back of the truck to pick up a quart of organic milk.”
Harsh. And while it’s Earth Day every day for many of the cleantech startups out there, we wanted to take a closer look at what the traditional tech companies are highlighting or announcing for today’s event. Unsurprisingly, it’s the quieter firms that often have the strongest eco-histories:
Google: The Googlers have expanded “Google Transit,” a feature in Google Maps for planning public transportation, to nine more cities, including San Francisco. They’re also pushing an “Energy Saver gadget” for Google Desktop for power optimization in PCs. And Google SketchUp has a new site for green design professionals. E2T Take: We dig the Google Transit adds! And Google gets that Earth Day is a gesture, because along with these light — but useful — features, the company is spending millions on renewable energy investing.
Yahoo: Of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, Yahoo is pushing the second “R” with its “reuse groups.” Accessible through a nice applet, the groups are supposed to connect your old but still useful stuff with new owners. Over at Yahoo-owned Flickr, the Freecycle Treasures photo stream is displaying the many things that people got through Freecycle, “an online flea market where everything is free.” E2T Take: All these swapping services just make us wonder: Isn’t that what Craigslist is for?
Phone Companies: T-Mobile says will plant at least 150,000 trees on behalf of 150,000 customers who opt for paperless billing this week. Verizon has launched some power management software for PCs (yawn), but more interestingly highlights its switch to thin clients in its call centers. And Cingular says it’s partnering with the EPA on promoting recycling (but only names the Pacific Northwest region). E2T Take: Some interesting ideas, but overall very minimal steps for companies that could do a lot more.
Intel: Intel’s keeping a low profile today, with its web site reading simply: “Earth Day. Every Day.” The company does highlight its sustainably designed products, sustainable operations and global citizenship initiatives. E2T Take: Intel deserves props for being the largest purchaser of clean energy — albeit via RECs — in the country, besting even the Air Force, and we like the modest marketing moves.
Dell: Teaming up with the EPA, TechTurn and the National Recycling Coalition, the computer giant over the weekend Dell hosted an educational e-cycling event in D.C. at which it accepted any brand of computer, monitor, printer or other computer equipment, as well as cell phones and PDAs, for recycling. E2T Take: Dell is no stranger to trying to help the planet. In 2006, Dell says they recovered more than 78 million pounds of equipment, unfortunately that’s just a drop in the bucket of the 2 million tons of e-waste the EPA estimates the U.S. generated in 2005.
Sun Microsystems: Sun’s Earth Day announcement is largely a rehash of the power-saving designs of their server systems, but it does include some interesting tidbits, like a rebate from PG&E for energy customers who switch to Sun’s CoolThread’s severs. E2T Take: Like Intel, nothing new here, but those PG&E rebates still impress us.
Xerox: The copier giant is turning to its employees around the world for Earth Day. In the UK, they have some vaguely defined “100-day carbon clean up campaign”. In Toronto and Rochester, N.Y., they’re planting trees and participating in city clean-up programs. And at Xerox’s recycling center in Cincinnati, they’re working with Nike to recycle — in addition to the usual electronics — old sneakers . E2T Take: Mobilizing the masses to clean up the planet is a really low-tech approach. As they struggle to stay relevant, it’s good to see Xerox get its hands dirty, but the moves are still pretty light and fluffy.
IBM: IBM tried to make Earth Day fun with their “earth-saving” video game,PowerUp, a free, online, multiplayer game in which participants build renewable energy systems in a virtual world.
E2T Take: E2T got to test the game at IBM’s booth at the Green Apple Festival and successfully constructed a wind turbine. While not a masterpiece of immersive gameplay, PowerUp could be a fun tool in environmental sciences classroom. But um…anything that could actually help?
Microsoft: Microsoft is mostly highlighting the energy-saving aspects of Vista; it’s also turned the front page of MSN green. Microsoft has in the past partnered with some good orgs like the Sierra Club and the Clinton Foundation to put their massive computing systems to the task of solving some complex eco-problems. E2T Take: OK, we get it, Vista has nifty power-saving options, but then we’d have to use Vista!
Craig Rubens contributed to this report.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2008\/04\/22\/what-the-tech-industry-is-doing-for-earth-day\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_2b0a62a16ad2ff026c14535180f58ec8","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}