photo: celeste1992
These days you can’t put on a conference without the obligatory nod toward carbon neutrality – "conference-goers’ business-class travel, town cars, bar bills and gratuitous swag will be offset by the planting of a forest in Botswana." So when the email with the subject line "2007 JavaOne Conference Gets Greener With Significant Efforts To Conserve, Recycle and Reuse" popped up on the BlackBerry, Green Wombat’s eyes glazed over just like they did back in ’99 when a chirpy PR person would call with news of the the latest $10 million round for the latest pets.com clone. But when the wombat got off deadline, a closer look at Sun Microsystems (SUNW) efforts to green up its annual JavaOne software confab now underway in San Francisco proved a bit of an eye-opener. Sun isn’t trying to carbon-neutralize the geek fest. It’s simply taking common-sense measures to reduce the environmental impact of such events. But the numbers are striking and serve as reminder that changing little things can have a big impact. For instance, Sun says that instead of inundating attendees with the usual paper blizzard, it did all its promotion of the event online. Not a radical
move these days but one 
that the company claims will save 4.6 tons of paper (sparing 111 trees), lower greenhouse
gas emissions by an equivalent of 13 tons, cut solid waste by 5.1 tons and reduce
wastewater by nearly 79,000 gallons. Now take online all the brochures, factsheets and other paper handed out by exhibitors and those numbers would skyrocket. Sun also touts its "Bike to JavaOne" initiative and its swag bag containing an "organic T-Shirt, note pad made from recycled paper and printed with soy ink." Better yet, why not dispense with the goodie bag – and backpacks – all together next year. Unless you’re an uber-geek, most of them will end up in a landfill before the 2008 JavaOne rolls around. (backpack photo: kasiat)
Green Wombat 
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