OVERVIEW AND ISSUES OF ASUS

About Asus

 

Products     Desktops, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, networking equipment, monitors, projectors, motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage, multimedia products, peripherals, wearables, servers, workstations, and tablet

• PCsAsus is the world’s 4th-largest PC vendor by 2015 unit sales.
• Asus appears in BusinessWeek’s “InfoTech 100” and “Asia’s Top 10 IT Companies” rankings, and it ranked first in the IT Hardware category of the 2008 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands survey with a total brand value of $1.3 billion.
• We at ASUS are fully committed to creating a sustainable future.
• We believe in adopting an eco-friendly approach towards every aspect of our business. This is where the GreenASUS philosophy comes in — from our internal practices to our production processes, to our green products and our environmentally-aware employees — we remain focused on safeguarding our planet.
• Today, ASUS-exclusive technologies are continually being designed and improved with the main goal of environmental conservation in mind.
• These technologies aside, other eco-friendly measures include the elimination of harmful substances from production process and the use of recyclable packaging materials.

Green Asus

 

GreenASUS consists of the following:

• Green Design
• Designs products that are easy to reuse, recycle, and disassemble, improves product power efficiency, and enforces adherence to hazardous substance guidelines.
• Green Manufacturing
• Implements greener manufacturing processes which are lead- and halogen-free.
• Green Procurement
• Oversees a green supply chain management (SRM) system and maintains an online database of green vendors.
• Green Services and Marketing
• Galvanizes support for recycling programs and ensures that charitable organizations benefit from these initiatives.

Problems

problems are this isn’t the first time you’ve heard about the need to go green as it relates to your IT  infrastructure. But even though the message is out there, not enough organizations are acting on it.The reason is obvious— Although datacenter managers want to save the environment, they also want to save money. In fact, it’s the old business adage that says to be successful, you have to save money and maintain performance. In other words, they’re worrying about another type of green.

• The truth of the matter is that, yes, adopting a green infrastructure can cost more money up front, but you can save thousands or even millions of dollars (depending on your organization’s size) by making some changes.
• While green initiatives can certainly be implemented at a smaller scale or local level, you’ll achieve greater success with an enterprise-wide program. Global adoption of new technologies and policies is essential to creating economies of scale.
• As with any IT initiative, a sustainability program requires planning and benchmarking. You’ll need to secure management support, put together a business plan, work in cross-departmental teams, set goals and measure progress.

Having gone through this process, we’ve learned a few lessons on how to get started and build a plan for success:

• Develop a comprehensive plan. We built a three-year roadmap that included initiatives already underway, tactical needs and even nice-to-have items. By starting with a solid baseline, you can set the right priorities and assess the full impact across the business.

II.Have long-term vision. From a business perspective, it’s

• important to build a plan that delivers short-term gains. But to be truly sustainable, you also want to build infrastructure that works over the long term. To do so, you’ll likely need to invest in foundational changes that might not provide immediate benefit. These will need to be explained and accounted for in your plan.
•   Build in flexibility.
• Ask what-if questions such as, “What if our product roadmap changes, requiring different platforms or configurations?” You don’t want to be in the position of needing to rebuild infrastructure if business priorities change in the future. Choose technologies that give you flexibility.
• Remember it’s a business shift Changes to the organization will be broader than just technology. Your plan needs to identify and work through all core business requirements.
• Plan for a staged implementation. This program will be competing for resources with “keep the lights on and systems running” activities that will always take priority. A slow and steady pace will be more successful than an all-at-once big bang. By taking a staged approach, we were able to hold our IT budget flat for three years, even while supporting an increase in IT needs.

 

• Leverage best-in-class partners. We’ve worked with vendors such as VMware, Cisco, HP, EMC and Microsoft. Since we use many emerging technologies, we’ve built mutually beneficial relationships—for example, participating in pilot programs at low or no cost, while helping them build their technology roadmaps.

 

• Get involved with industry organizations. We’re members of The Green Grid, which provides excellent resources on data center efficiency and helps you connect with technically forward￾thinking organizations. We’ve also joined The Climate Registry, which provides a standard, independently verified method to document your company’s current emissions and track subsequent reductions.
• After our own planning, research and prioritization, it became clear that we should initially focus on three areas that would drive the greatest gains—IT efficiency, telecommuting and reducing paper consumption.

Toxins

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans throw out more than 2 million tons of consumer electronics annually, making electronic waste (also known as e-waste) one of the fastest growing components of the municipal waste stream. When these electronics break down, they release mercury and other toxins.

E-waste is a concern because of the impact of its toxicity and carcinogenicity when components are not properly disposed of. Toxic substances can include:

• Lead
• Mercury
• Cadmium
• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)

 

Power consumption

The greener IT products like data servers, data storage devices, printers, network connections, monitors and other computer peripherals are a part of a certain companies that is indispensable. With the implementation of power management featured on a certain greener product, almost 10 percent of overall power energy consumption can be saved.

 

Solutions

For many years now, responsible environmentalism and energy conservationalism were not normally associated with computer systems and technology. But with “going green” currently advocated, there are various ways of practicing Green computing with technology, which are as follows.

 

1. Maintaining easily managed network systems can save a lot of time and resources.server requirements hence saving use of resources, such as electricity, hardware, and other more.

2. Cutting down on paper, electricity, hardware, and toner. Color settings of printers should constantly be checked. By calibrating printer settings, an individual can eventually save substantial amount of money while producing high-quality printed documents. A floor lamp with an energy efficient bulb is preferable than overhead ones, saves time and energy, and non-stressing to the eyes.

3. Virtualizing the actual work setting offers the employees the capability to work from the comforts of their home without compromising productivity. Such work set-up allows employees to even save money from daily use of gasoline and exposure to various pollutions.

4. Preferring a remote,electronic management system. This system provides a more efficient printing resolution enabling favorable productivity thus, ensuring both customer and employee contentment.

5. Monitoring and regulating staff Internet access and use. Content filter solutions prove to be effective tools in reducing and/or eliminating potential Internet problems. Doing these help increase staff efficiency and productivity while achieving a safe Internet environment for every employee.

6. Using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) can save substantial time and money among employees since the service is either free or low cost.

 In conclusion, the process of organizations “going green” does not only concern computers and technology, but also involves responsible conservation and management of energy and resources.

 The Business of Recycling

Recycled materials. There are computer systems that seemingly are no longer functional for a specific process but applicable to some other things like simple word processing jobs and mathematical calculations. If you no longer find these systems, you can have these re-purposed or can be donated to other institutions.

Old computers, notebook computers, and other electronic equipment contain hazardous chemicals that can be harmful to the environment when disposed in a landfill with trash. By recycling, the metals, plastics, and components found in an old computer will be broken down and reused to make new products. And, the environment is protected from any uncontrolled release of harmful chemicals gas emissions. In other organizations, carbon footprint might mean that everything is tallied—sourcing materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, disposal, and so forth.

When computing your company’s carbon footprint, you need to decide how complete and honest you want to be. Measuring your carbon footprint necessitates gathering a lot of information. Let’s consider your carbon footprint as it relarelates to greenhouse gases. You need to track such areas as

• Facilities
• Operations
• Transportation
• Travel
• Purchases

REPORT

Taiwanese company ASUS’s N51V notebook computer is the world’s first notebook computer to receive both Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) and carbon footprint (PAS 2050:2008) certificates. Based on EPD, ASUS follows BSI PAS 2050:2008 to implement Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) which includes five phases—materials, manufacturing, using, transportation, and disposal—and subsequently discloses completely the direct and indirect GHG emission data during each phase.

According to the results of the ASUS product carbon footprint inventory and GeSI analysis, product impact on the environment is the most significant factor in worsening the greenhouse effect. This is why we have chosen the notebook, our major consumer electronic product, as a subject to be carbon neutralized.

1. System Boundary

 The system boundary of our carbon footprint inventory is based on the notebook product-category rule (PCR:2008) set by the Global Environmental Declarations Network (GEDnet). However, this PCR demands that components be either mandatorily inclusive or voluntarily inclusive in carbon footprint inventory assessment, and it excludes some parts of the product life cycle. This rule does not comply with section 6.3 of the PAS 2050:2008 standard where 95% of the estimated emission should be included in the carbon footprint inventory assessment. Therefore, we included all the components into the assessment and calculated the carbon emission of the missing parts of the product life cycle to get the total amount.

 Boundaries of Notebook Life Cycle Inventory Assessment

Although the carbon footprint inventory assessment is conducted based on the PAS 2050 standard, the complicated nature of the supply chain for electronic product forced us to split production into two different stages. One is the raw material extraction and component manufacturing, and the other one is where components are assembled into products. (Refer to Fig. 2．Boundaries of Notebook Life Cycle Inventory Assessment). footprint of product sold to specific countries and the reduction.

Achievement of Carbon Footprint Reduction

We determined the carbon footprint of U53SD and reduction in accordance with PAS 2050:2008. Table 1 lists the qualified carbon footprint of product sold to specific countries and the reduction.

HARDWARE

Proper use of the system devices like the monitors. Instead of using the CRT or the Cathode Ray Tube monitors which emit large amount of electric heat that can damage the environment; you can opt at having liquefied crystal display of the LCD

Datacenters

ASUS servers are the cornerstone of an optimised system that provides seamless integration with data centers and the cloud. Built with high computing power, ultra-high memory capacity, superior cooling efficiency and other important technologies, ASUS servers are able to manage massive amounts of campus data so your data center runs smoothly

LED Monitor

Our award-winning LED monitors combine ergonomics with an energy￾efficient design for outstanding brightness and high-contrast displays. ASUS provides a wide selection of screen sizes from 17 to 24 inch. With a comprehensive ASUS product line, you have the freedom to select the features that best fit your budget and needs 

Desktop PC 

A wide variety of desktop PC form factors may be needed even within a single institution. Professional librarians with a heavy workload may need high performance workstations, while less demanding users can get all the computing power they need from thin-client PCs. That is why we have a complete lineup of desktop PC products to meet your demands and your budget.

POWER MANAGEMENT

 The life of your physical devices relies on how effective and efficient you manage them. One of the classic examples is the efficient use of the portable system battery. By using the power management feature of your system, you can actually disable some features of your system that consumes too much battery usage. Not only will this save electric charging fee but also saving your battery from easily being worn out.