Green thoughts

You've been warned — by Al Gore, no less. The planet is warming quickly and is precariously perched at the lip of an environmental, ecological Cuisinart. Some parts of our world — polar ice caps, global weather patterns and certain unlucky species — may have already fallen too far into the mix/chop/grind cycle that lies below to be saved irreparable damage.

Even before the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” made former Vice President Gore an Oscar winner, the conservation of the planet's environment was becoming a hot-button issue, not only for activist citizens worldwide, but also for global agencies, the governments of individual countries and the various industries that call those countries home.

Whether you think global warming and other environmental problems are myths unworthy of your time or not is no longer an issue. There will be great change in environmental policies, and each globally significant industry and its members will be swept along with it.

Industrially, and particularly where the telecommunications industry is concerned, we are in the earliest phases of that change. In any global industrial effort to conserve the environment, the participation of an industry as huge and influential as telecom is a must.

Perhaps predictably, there are few U.S. telecom companies taking the lead in the effort to be environmentally progressive, and from a larger perspective, that may be a reflection of the fact that the U.S. is behind most of the world in setting environmental policies.

That's not the case in Europe, where the European Union has been active, cultivating a policy called “The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive” (RoHS) over the last four years. The RoHS Directive took effect last July, and it restricts the use of several different potentially dangerous materials, including lead, mercury, cadmium, and the production of various electronic and electrical equipment. Another policy, “The Waste Electrical Equipment Directive,” is aimed at preventing “e-waste,” or the disposal of potentially hazardous electronic materials.

The European Union also has had a “Battery Directive” in place since 1991, which was updated a few years ago to encompass a broader variety of batteries and power supplies, including batteries from telecom equipment. However, all of these policies are merely guidelines and not actual enforceable laws, so countries and industries need to be vigilant about spreading the environmentally friendly gospel.

Individual companies must do their part to meet the new guidelines. Several makers of network power supplies are marketing portable fuel cell technologies, and Ericsson recently developed a biofuel-operated base station. Elsewhere, Comtrend, a vendor of broadband access equipment to many international markets as well as to U.S-based IPTV service providers like Pioneer Telephone and SureWest, is already making the migration to have its equipment confirm to the new policies.

“Environmental standards are very difficult to miss as you're doing business,” said Andrew Morton, general manager of global markets for Comtrend. “Everyone is talking about it right now. Carriers like Jazztel will only accept RoHS-compliant equipment. We've decided to make compliance a corporate practice wherever we do business.”

He said carriers in Europe have been eager to incorporate the guidelines, and that originally, Comtrend was getting most of its intelligence on environmental standards under discussion at the EU directly from its carrier customers.

There have been rumblings about development of new RoHS-like policies in the U.S., but nothing has happened. The closest to a similar guideline in the U.S. is California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act, Morton said.

Instead, it appears U.S. companies themselves must be more proactive about adopting environmentally sound practices. In high-tech, many of the computer companies have adopted baseline requirements largely derived from existing European policies they are familiar with because they ship and receive shipments globally. Though some U.S. telecom service providers have environmental groups or point people who are studying the issue, they haven't made much meaningful progress.

Wherever possible, AT&T's Cingular Wireless division uses environmentally sound generator equipment, but a company spokesman said broader, more strategic deployment of such equipment and corporate practices is a future consideration. “We're looking at fuel cell technology and some other things, but it's way in its infancy,” he said. “But with everyone talking about this, all wireless carriers will be moving in this direction. At some point, why would you want to use antiquated technology?”

In telecom, everything has a price, and the costs associated with adopting environmentally sound practices are not insignificant. Morton said Comtrend had to revamp its production line to ensure lead wasn't introduced, and the additional cost of doing that extends to overall product management. But Morton said he would like to see Comtrend go beyond just complying with the European standards. “I'd like to see us get further into recycling materials during the manufacturing process. That's the right way to go in the future.”

Morton said Comtrend is being careful about passing those costs along to its customers. “We're taking on those costs for our customers, and I hope our peers in the market do the same thing.”