HOW TO BECOME MORE SUSTAINABLE IN YOUR SCHOOL’S TECH USE

GARY HENDERSON, ANME ambassador and director of IT at Millfield School, gives his top tips to ensure your school is more sustainable in its use of technology

Environmental sustainability in technology is an increasingly important subject. I have seen it often mentioned in enterprise technology circles and can see it becoming more important in educational technology circles as well. The question is, how can we seek to become more environmentally sustainable in our technology use in schools?

The key thing to consider is the ‘technology cycle’ as a whole. The first part of this cycle is the production of any hardware, including the sourcing of raw materials and labour, and then moving on to the supply logistics, including shipping and packaging.

Once the technology has got to our schools, we move to the operations phase and the cost of running the solution, including electricity, consumables, heating, lighting, staffing, etc.

The last part of the cycle is decommissioning or disposal, which might include removal and recycling – because the technology cycle should also include the environmental impact caused not only by the need to create the item for our use, but also the need to dispose of the item after our use.

We need to engage with vendors and ask them questions concerning their efforts to improve sustainability and this needs to become a crucial part of our procurement process. It may not, initially, be possible to do this with every supplier and every purchase but, at the very least, we can start with some of our more significant purchases and more common suppliers. We may not be able to make massive leaps in our environmental sustainability, but we can, at least, seek to make continual and incremental improvements.

We need to think carefully about what we will do with technology when it reaches the end of life within our organisation. Can others reuse it, bearing in mind any data protection or cyber security implications? Can it be recycled and, if so, who will do this for us and how will they collect the device?

● Servers On-site servers are, for me, an area which represents an easy win. The pandemic has seen a big push for schools to move to the cloud, usually with Microsoft or Google, for file and email storage and collaboration tools. This move may have been driven by improved scalability and cyber security but it also has an impact on environmental sustainability.

By using cloud services we need fewer servers on-site; this means we have reduced the need to produce servers for our direct use along with their delivery and disposal. We have also reduced the school’s electricity requirements by removing the need to keep servers, and any A/C or other comms room equipment, poweredup.

If looking at cost savings, as a rough calculation, we could say that a 120Watt double-PSU server running at 25% usage would use 120 x 2 x 24 x 365 x 25% / 1000 KWH or 525.6 kWh. Multiplied by the electricity cost, this will provide a rough guide to electricity cost savings, not including the additional savings from lower A/C power costs, providing both environmental and cost benefits.

Moving to the cloud doesn’t remove the impact on the environment altogether - the impact has been displaced to Microsoft or Google. However, given the sizes of these companies, they are in a far better place to manage the requirements through economies of scale, or to seek to offset impact through tree-planting or other methods. From a school’s point of view, it is easy to get information from Microsoft or Google regarding their

efforts at improved environmental sustainability, as supported by a school’s move to their solutions. ● Device suppliers Another area I think is an easy win relates to our device suppliers, especially where we source significant numbers of devices from them. We can ask them how they source their components and their labour to create their devices. We can ask them if they make any efforts concerning carbon offsetting their operation’s impact on the environment. We can ask them what efforts they are making in terms of transportation and packaging in order to become more environmentally-friendly.

With most of these companies operating in the enterprise , as well as education, they should be able to provide well-rehearsed answers to these questions. Equally, we can look to these companies for how they can support us with end-of-life arrangements for their equipment, and whether they would collect and recondition, or collect and recycle, complete with the relevant datadestruction documentation. ● Printing (that old chestnut!) It wouldn’t be right to look at environmental sustainability without looking at printing. Paper production and printing, the need for printers - including their manufacture and supply - and the production and use of toner all have an environmental impact. Given access to technology, email and file-sharing, do we still need to be printing as much, and can we not reduce our environmental impact through reductions in printing?

I have been involved with schools for long enough to understand the need for some printing, and how a move away from it is often perceived as difficult - plus, I understand how current, paperbased, terminal exams encourage the use of printing and copying as we seek to prepare students. My answer to this, therefore, is not the paperless office or classroom we have long been promised, but simply efforts towards continually and incrementally reducing print volumes over time. If we can at least lessen the amount of printing, or the number of printers, we can reduce our environmental impact.

I think it is also essential to acknowledge the importance of environmental sustainability in the broader context of schools. In most schools things are already in place concerning environmental sustainability, including awareness programmes with students, efforts to reduce food waste, etc. Examining the impact of technology use on environmental sustainability is just another aspect of the wider effort to address environmental sustainability within our schools, including building the critical awareness among students, staff and the wider school community. It is, however, an important aspect.

Environmental sustainability in relation to technology use is an essential consideration in schools. It may not be urgent in some people’s eyes although, in the view of others, it certainly is. Either way, it is crucial either way for our children’s and students’ futures - and their eventual children’s futures.

As an important consideration, the sooner we sit down and look at it, and make a start, the better. For those overseeing the technology strategy in schools, it is another consideration that must be addressed. Gary Henderson, ANME Ambassador, director of IT at Millfield School, (Also a trained teacher with 20+ years’ experience across secondary schools, further education and higher education, both in the UK and the Middle East.)