May 1 2008
Office Depot, a leading global provider of office products and services, was recognized with the Site Facilities Physical Infrastructure Overhead Best-in-Class Award at the 2008 Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT Recognition Ceremony. The multi-channel retailer, which has a global environmental vision to increasingly buy green, be green and sell green, was honored for pioneering energy-efficiency improvements in its data center operations.
The Uptime Institute is a leading research-based think-tank and corporate advisory group that consults on business and technology issues related to critical computing, environment reliability and energy efficiency.
Through various initiatives in its Global Data Center, Office Depot was able to increase the reliability of its IT operations while expanding its capacity and reducing energy usage.
The winners of the first Green Enterprise IT Awards were announced April 29 at the third annual Green Enterprise Computing Symposium in Orlando, Florida. Office Depot was recognized in the Facilities Site Physical Infrastructure (power and cooling) category.
“Like many of our environmental initiatives, improving the efficiency of Office Depot’s Global Data Center has increased the reliability of our IT function while reducing our energy usage and costs,” said Tim Toews, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Office Depot. “Our efforts have resulted in a true win-win.”
In 2007 Office Depot participated in a Cooling System Efficiency Study, which provided important insights on improving reliability and reducing energy usage in its Global Data Center. Following the study, Office Depot was able to implement a number of new initiatives including:
- Sealing all computer room raised floor openings to maximize efficiency and reduce energy usage;
- Installing computer room air handlers, which take hot air out of the room, cools it and reuses it;
- Improving data center chillers to increase efficiency and reliability; and
- Evaluating and implementing new hardware that is more energy and cost efficient to run.
“Office Depot’s environmental vision is to increasingly buy green, be green and sell green,” said Yalmaz Siddiqui, Director of Environmental Strategy. “By investing in energy efficiency at our Global Data Center we are reducing the carbon footprint of our most energy intense facility and saving costs in the process.”
Office Depot’s achievements at its Global Data Center complement the Company’s overall environmental commitment and various initiatives, including:
- Creating The Green Book® catalog of thousands of environmentally-friendly products and educational content for Office Depot’s small, medium and large business customers;
- Launching Office Depot Green™ and becoming the first in the office products industry to introduce a “green” line with consistent packaging;
- Establishing a $2.2 million Forest & Biodiversity Conservation Alliance through which Office Depot partnered with Conservation International, NatureServe and The Nature Conservancy to resolve real issues in the forestry sector to guide our sustainable efforts;
- Developing a Paper Purchasing Policy through which we became the first office supply company to make Forest Stewardship Council certified paper widely available in the U.S.;
- Reducing the Company’s overall Carbon Dioxide emissions output in 2006 by 10.1 percent;
- Retrofitting the lighting in the Company’s North American retail store chain to T5 high-output fluorescent lighting, which is 35 percent more efficient than traditional, incandescent lighting;
- Replacing our fleet of “box trucks” to ultra-low-emission “Sprinter” vehicles, which are on average 40 percent more fuel-efficient than their predecessors and get an estimated 15 or more miles per gallon; and
- Groundbreaking on the Company’s first “Green” store, which will be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council upon completion in summer 2008.