“No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.” It’s a fun e-mail footer that shows up occasionally in place of the rather smug variation, “Consider the environment before printing this e-mail.” It also pokes a little fun at the fallacy that digital content is somehow exempt from harm to the environment. Regardless of whether an e-mail may save a small fraction of resources over a piece of paper, it’s important to understand that as more of modern life happens in the digital cloud, there is still an environmental cost.

We recently saw the European Commission recognize 27 IBM Data Centers for energy efficiency. The commission, the executive body of the European Union, was going by the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centers, and we’re not 100 percent sure what requirements that entails, but we do know it’s A Good Thing. In fact, as IBM officials said in a press statement, the honor represents “the largest portfolio of data centers from a single company to receive the recognition.”The idea is to reduce energy consumption “in a cost-effective manner without decreasing mission critical data center functions,” IBM officials said, using certain established best practices.