The IT Naturally Podcast
IT is about more than systems and software – it’s about people, progress, and purpose.
In this podcast, our CEO, Julie Bishop, speaks to IT leaders, digital changemakers, and purpose-driven organisations to uncover how technology is being used for good – from transforming teams to tackling social challenges.
Julie loves chatting about her favourite subject – people and tech – especially with those who are doing IT differently.
The IT Naturally Podcast
Why Green IT Grew Up: Data, Duty and Doing the Right Thing with Phil Wharton
“Green IT” used to mean switching off screensavers or recycling old laptops. But times have changed.
In this episode of the IT Naturally Podcast, Julie Bishop speaks to Phil Wharton- Interim Technology Leader, Board Adviser and Independent Consultant who has held senior roles at Google, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, PA Consulting, Novo Nordisk and the Eden Project.
Phil explains why Green IT has grown up, moving from simple gestures to a board-level responsibility rooted in data, duty, and doing the right thing. Together they discuss:
- Why “sustainability” in IT can’t mean sustaining the status quo.
- Practical wins: app rationalisation, cloud right-sizing, and device lifecycle.
- How FinOps and GreenOps turn carbon savings into cost savings.
- The strengths and flaws of ESG frameworks and reporting standards.
- The role of accessibility and inclusion in truly sustainable IT.
- Why AI, when harnessed well, still gives hope for a regenerative future.
Phil also shares stories from his time at the Eden Project and beyond, showing how technology connects communities, shapes culture, and can be a force for good when led with purpose.
If you’ve ever wondered what IT leaders can really do to reduce impact and how to balance shareholder pressure with societal responsibility, this episode is for you.
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Welcome to the IT Naturally podcast, where we talk to IT leaders using technology to create positive change.
My guest today is Phil Wharton.
had an incredible journey across enormous organisations like Google, Jaguar, Land Rover, Rolls Royce and the Eden
each with very, different missions and cultures.
What have these experiences taught
about the role that technology can drive
reducing our impact?
Phil Wharton (00:27)
Hi Julie, nice to be talking to
Yeah, I have worked in multiple different organisations and sectors. think the, you know, there's some big ones there that have a huge impact. I mean, Automotive, Jaguar, Land Rover, mentioned, Rolls-Royce Aerospace. So these organisations can, by definition of what they produce and what they do, have a massive impact. I think the interesting part though is if I go back maybe 15 years,
⁓ People didn't really understand the impact technology was having. People really didn't know that, you know, an awful lot about climate change, an awful lot about biodiversity loss, an awful lot about sustainability in its broadest sense. People really didn't get that. And I think there's been a bit of an awakening since. So if I go back to ⁓ our days in Jaguar Land Rover in particular, we used to have talks from people like IBM about green IT.
green IT actually mean, you know. And I think what's really interesting is the way it's evolved. if you mentioned the Eden project there, I that's 20 years ago now. And even back then, we were looking at repurposing our old IT and sending it off to different parts of the world. That's vastly changed now. You those sorts of needs are very, very different. The world is growing up fast. Technology adoption is growing fast. Consumption, one of the biggest problems that sits behind this, is growing fast.
The world is connected and everybody's got a device of some description. And so therefore the growth of technology has been huge, ⁓ exponential really in the timeframe of those organisations. And it's just had another hockey stick curve. So we're seeing the same thing again with AI. And if you look at the press in the last week and Meta's investment and Nvidia's investment and everybody else's investment in huge data center capability as a utility in all parts of the world as well. So.
That's interesting in and of itself. The Global South is starting to invest now quite heavily. So we're seeing African based data centers. We've seen data in the Middle East. So we're seeing this almost lots of shifting sands, I would say. So even back to 15 years ago when we started talking about green IT and people didn't really know what that meant. People really start to get it now. have learned there's an awful lot of science, an awful lot of unequivocal science now, which points to challenges of climate change and so on.
So I think more and more people are interested in how they can reduce the impact. When you see the scale of technology globally, it's massive. whether the number, and it varies depending on who you talk to, whether the number is 4 % or 7 % of global emissions, that's a massive amount. So the opportunity is there to do something different. I think sustainability is a bit of a misnomer in this context because the word sustain exists in sustainability. We can't sustain what we're doing right now.
still avoid the worst impacts of climate change. So we do have to do something fundamentally different. And I'm starting to see an uptick in terms of startups that are looking at cloud footprint calculators, for example. Those have been around for a few years now. A number of organisations that are looking at supply chain, for example, and starting to drive efficiencies, looking at provenance and so on. But fundamentally at the heart of this is a massive data and analytics challenge. So I think back to your question.
You know, the way that there's a sort of common thread between those organisations, irrespective of the industry and some, as I say, a bigger impact than others, is the value in technology and shining a light on that impact and gathering the data to focus on that impact. And I think that's where it's really useful. Massive dangers in terms of growth, terms of energy consumption, precious metal usage and so on. We'll come to that, I'm sure, in a few minutes. But I think that
The common thread is the ability for technology to actually do something
Julie Bishop (04:21)
And how do you see large organisations trying to make this shift? There are small, there are mission-led organisations who are really trying to make a difference. But where are the biggest opportunities? Where are the biggest challenges?
Phil Wharton (04:39)
I mean, if you look at it purely from a technology point of view, then it is a challenge. It's a challenge to go to the CFO with a big spend to reduce your impact. What you see in a lot with green ops is essentially FinOps and there's lots of cost savings that equate to reduction in carbon, is goodness and that's becoming easier to do. But organisations now have got two challenges really. They've got those that have made a commitment to...
net zero at a point in time, ideally in line with the Paris Agreement. And obviously, for bigger geopolitical reasons, we're seeing a number of organisations wind back on that. We've seen Europe being the front runner and the sort of convergence of disclosure standards and corporate sustainability reporting directive, I think is great, but even that's been watered down a little recently. So I think there's I think there's an opportunity for technology to go beyond
scope of technology to look at how they gather data for the rest of the organization. Take manufacturing organisations as a great example. You've got to go up and down the value chain. You've got to be able to look at, you know, provenance of your supply chain, material provenance. What does that look like? Where does that impact the value of the product that you make? And where does it impact from a sustainability point of view? Those are really complex challenges. Technology plays a part in that. So I think that role of technology has shifted as well. It's not just focusing on
technology in and of itself. And there's an awful lot of what used to be called the greening of IT. But you know, there's an awful lot of work to do to think about how you make your technology more efficient. And that's everything from how you design it, how you code more efficiently through to thinking about circularity and devices and equipment and so on, keeping stuff from being dug out of the ground in terms of precious metals and so on. So I think there's an awful lot of work to do there. But the value of technology in helping to assess the impact across
multiple complex dimensions. Again, if you think about how hard it is to really ⁓ capture the full impact of something like a car as a product, you think about all the different materials that go into that, all the different parts, all the different geographies and products and parts that are transported multiple times sometimes. So you've got so many different dimensions. And that's why I say at one level, it's a huge data and analytics challenge to try and capture that. And that's the starting point, right? You've got to first understand what it is, what impact are you actually having?
And that's got smarter and smarter over the last couple of years. And so people are getting a ⁓ sharper view of where their products are impacting. And of course, you've still got the classic challenges of how you measure Scope 3 in particular. And of course, we're now talking about things like Scope 4, and we've got to think about life cycle of products. It was only a few years ago, where what, you just buy an electric car and that solves the world, isn't it? Well, no, of course it doesn't. So you've got to think about those.
you've still got to think mindfully about the product that you're buying and think about its life cycle. And of course, organisations, the bigger ones, we're still driven by the same model, whether they're big or small, the small ones have a little bit more agility and can be a little bit more focused in the way you describe. But I think that the big, particularly listed organisations are driven by shareholder value still, it's still a system that drives the behavior, it's quarterly returns, it's that classic model that we somehow need to break.
Julie Bishop (08:05)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And one of the things that we're involved in at IT Naturally is the Better Business Act and trying to look at how can businesses be measured far more widely than just shareholder value. One thing we did right from the beginning, Phil, which is quite simplistic compared to some of the things that you're talking about was ⁓ clearing out
centers.
We were formed during COVID and I think during COVID, most of us went through our homes and realized that half the stuff we did, we had, we didn't need and we all cleared out and we can, but we found when we've gone to companies, you look at the plethora of applications and they don't really need half or in probably more than half of what they've
but it's up, it's spinning, it's wasting energy and it's...
costing them money. So one of the steps we've used to help people understand just the start of this journey is to say, well, let's clear everything out. Let's get rid of everything you don't need. Let's stop backing stuff up that you don't even know what it is in the first place, that it's 20 year old data and you don't even know why you've got it and stuff like that. So, so what I suppose I want to look at is how do we balance the really important
but often quite complex things that you're talking about with just some.
Phil Wharton (09:37)
Good housekeeping. You're absolutely right. I mean, you're absolutely right. It does start with the basics and it starts with things like, you know, good data management, life cycle policies. It is about, actually it starts with how you architect, and architect in the broadest sense, because how you architect in terms of technology, but also organizationally, how you establish the basic principles and you architect your thinking, your organization, full-operate model, because that steers the way you
Julie Bishop (09:38)
think housekeeping.
Yeah.
Phil Wharton (10:08)
buy a product and the things you think about at that point. It steers the way you're applying code because it's principles that are about efficiency. It steers how you manage your workloads when you're in whatever cloud environment you happen to be. To your point, there's an awful lot of organisations out there that are paying for the what if and they're spinning stuff up for the what if. And yes, there are certain retail sector at certain times of the year, they need burst capacity and so on. But the number of organisations that keep that equivalent for now good reason.
But, you know, and we started to see risk in a different way. And this is why I think some of the disclosure standards are really interesting because, you know, a lot of a lot of what used to exist, you going back a few years before the EU in particular started to get smart, it was very much what's the sort of financial view of the impact, you what's the risk to my investment as a result of. Whereas that, you know, the corporate sustainability reporting directive starts to drive the outside, sorry, the inside out view. You what impact am I having?
And that starts to drive some of that thinking. It starts to get people opening cupboard doors and figuring out what they've got. And it is good housekeeping from a technology point of view. But it also starts people thinking about physical devices and well, you know, do we need to change these every three years or can it be four, five, eight years? And when we do change it, can we look to an organization that might repurpose that in some way or might extract the precious metals from that and keep them in circulation rather than having to go dig more at the ground?
People are seeing those options that are smart options, often the most cost effective options. Often you can get a better outcome financially for that stuff. So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. But also it's sustainability in the broader sense as well, which you touched on a little bit earlier on, was, there's a sort of social and human aspect to this as well. So when you think
accessibility, for example, when you think about democratizing digital access and those sorts of things.
This is, they don't quite fall into the basic housekeeping aspect, but you know, making sure that everybody in your organization has access to do their job in the right way in the most effective way that works for them. And so often that gets overlooked. And you're right, because COVID shone a light on that as well, which is quite a lot of work went on during that period. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It does start with the basics.
Julie Bishop (12:27)
I love when my first guest I spoke to when we were talking about how does technology help with access and allowing people access to more information. She gave a wonderful example of how actually for her, her father
Telephone banking works for him. He can't actually use the computer. Sometimes we can end up getting so far down the IT route because that's our life that we forget that that doesn't actually make it accessible for everybody.
Phil Wharton (12:58)
Yeah,
I mean, these these are really important things. And again, without without getting too big and scary, you know, there are parts of the world that really don't have access to basic banking is good example, you know, and, you know, living parts of the world where they don't have a mobile phone signal. Those things are starting to change now, which is great. know, micro banking and micro finance. Yeah. And it's getting people out of poverty, which is great. So there's so much opportunity. The problem is, of course, that just adds to the bigger sum, the global sum. So
These things need to be, we need to be sort of putting more back in than we take out of ⁓ the way we consume natural resources in particular. So I ⁓ think there's a balance to that. There's always a balance to that. But I do think there's an awful lot of good it can do.
Julie Bishop (13:41)
And you talked previously about some of the standards. Do you think that some of the frameworks that we've got are helping us move forward or do you think some of the frameworks are actually tying us back to where we were before?
Phil Wharton (13:58)
I mean, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? So I think that the where it becomes a tick box exercise, which you think is where we've been, it's problematic. I mean, I'll give you an example. I some years ago, I was working with a an investment company, a family office, actually, of an Australian wealthy industrialist. And he had an investment company and we worked with all the ratings agencies at the time. were talking to them.
gave them particular fund and said, go and rate this in the ESG rating sense. Now, we got as many different answers as ratings agencies we asked, right? So this really weird perverse scoring of things as well. I some, I won't mention names for fear of lawsuits, but some organisations that are perhaps the nastiest, dirtiest organisations in the world that might come out with an hour of rating on the ESG score, simply because they're really, you're going to really high G score because they're really good at disclosing how bad they are environmentally. And you kind of go, why? That doesn't quite work.
But you get this weird output where at that point, the sort of
of impact and the measurement and the complexity, how do you how do you disaggregate the level of complexity across all of the aspects of sustainability down to ESG and a single score? Really, really hard. So I think that started to mature a little bit. I think the again, the flip of the lens from outside in to inside out, I think, has helped. And it's starting organisations to think not just about
you know, thinking about it's always with a financial lens from an organisation point of view. But if you think about financial capital ⁓ and how you look at natural capital, human capital, social capital, manufactured capital through that lens, and you look at it in a sort of balanced sense, then ⁓ you can start to speak the language of both the investors and business and you can start to look at, well, yes, we've still got that view of risk. And yes, we need to think about resilience and what that looks like in the longer term.
But equally, there's something about understanding the cost of what organisations do. There's some huge FMCG type organisations, again, I won't mention names, who often have bottles floating around in our oceans, which has huge impact. If that cost was priced in as an externality, then they wouldn't be in business, right? So the more and more people understand that, the more organisations understand the actual impact.
And again, technology plays a huge part in that. The more likely they are to think, hang on a minute, and this is consumer power, consumer start voting with their feet and organisations like B Corp. B Corp has had some challenges over recent years, but at its heart, it's absolutely right. It is about balance across people, profit and planet. And it is about the principles there are right. And okay, it's been a little bit bumpy, but I think that is really, those values hold true.
Those organisations are attracting more and more customers because people are going to hang out with them. And some are often less price driven, actually, and less price sensitive. They're more value sensitive. And there's a generation of people, children are 20 and 19, and they've got a completely different view on what's right, what's wrong and where they want to be spending their money. And quite right, too. So I think that combination of people waking up, science evolving, maturing.
understanding starting to grow, collective understanding. You're starting to see shifts, you start to see people move.
Julie Bishop (17:28)
And we're definitely
seeing it. So as you know, we're a we're a B Corp, but we're not saying it's actually that shift is often with B Corp's that are B2Cs. It's harder when you're a B Corp that's a B2B because the B, the other business has got shareholders has got investors and then it's harder for them to make sometimes the right decisions as you said, you said earlier.
Phil Wharton (17:56)
Yeah.
Julie Bishop (17:56)
If I'm
going to buy yet another dress, I don't need another dress. I don't need another dress my entire life. But if I want to another dress, I can make myself feel less guilty about it by buying a sustainable one. But it's very different making business decisions sometimes, isn't it?
Phil Wharton (18:13)
Well, I think it is, but even then, if our politicians can get their collective heads together and force organisations to think about the right things, they've got to look at their supply chain and you can be part of that supply
Julie Bishop (18:18)
Just changing, Yeah.
Yeah,
It is very exciting and it's about how do we, not we, but how do people talk about facts and not the greenwashing which you talked about a lot at the beginning which...
Phil Wharton (18:39)
This is one of the challenges of technology, right? Social media was designed to manipulate. That's what it is. It's designed to drive behavior and drive thinking, which it does very, very well, very effectively, but often not in the right way. So there is a bit of learning to continue to do. But take some of the evidence in France recently that organisations are being fined and they're getting a big financial slap in the face for not getting this stuff right. ⁓ And that's organisations in...
Fast fashion, for example, is one particular that I'm thinking of. So I think there's a good momentum build. It's perhaps slower than we need it to be at the moment. It's definitely happening.
Julie Bishop (19:19)
Has it felt or it's felt to me that there's a little bit of a step backwards at the
Phil Wharton (19:26)
Well, there has been undoubtedly that, you look at the public organisations who've backed out of their previous commitments to net zero. ⁓ And it's not a surprise that, you know, given the sort of geopolitical challenges we're facing right now, where more wants to go, even governments. I
Julie Bishop (19:41)
Yeah.
Phil Wharton (19:44)
the UK has done reasonably well in terms of its energy mix and how we start to shift towards renewable, ⁓ relatively speaking, in a global sense. But even now, we're starting to...
Julie Bishop (19:50)
Yeah, that's
Phil Wharton (19:54)
have to shift more money towards defense and more organisations are doing that. We've got the slightly odd ⁓ challenges coming from the US right now, which is driving global policy and organizational behavior in a way that perhaps we haven't seen before. So I think those challenges are definitely there. They're watering down policy. There's definitely organisations that are stepping back a little bit. Honestly, I think that's probably something that's going to
right itself, you've only got to look at floods in Texas or heat waves across Europe again and again and again, you can't escape some of the worst impacts right now. So I think there'll be a natural rebalance of that in the coming years. I think we just have to keep going. ⁓
Julie Bishop (20:33)
some things.
So building
on that positive answer, thank you, Phil. Looking ahead, what gives you the most hope about technology's role in creating a more regenerative, a more positive future for us all?
Phil Wharton (20:58)
number of things we've sort of already touched on. You you hear a lot about the challenges of AI and what that might mean in all its different guises. Is it job losses? Is it the end of the world because it can think for itself? I mean, think we're, personally, think we're some way off AGI, for example, or ASI.
general intelligence and super intelligence, but it's happening. There's an awful lot of money going into it, but really the big players aren't making any money from it just yet. It's the consultancy selling this stuff. And I think there's a little bit of, a little part of me that thinks about the digital transformation 20 years ago and how long it took to really get traction, cloud computing, how long that took to get traction. I think this is slightly different because of the nature of what it is. But again, you know, if...
If harnessed well and harnessed by governments, look at what came out of Switzerland recently. There's a huge capability that's been built there for public good ⁓ and for public use. I think that's, you know, there are opportunities for governments to invest properly in this. And I think there's a danger that we allow and certain economies allow big corporations to make big bets that effectively
impact the rest of the world. I think that's wrong. think that's what government, the nation states are there for 50 year bets and for creating and generating things like the internet. That kind of research is where there's huge value. But if you think about ⁓ drug development, if you think about things like Alpha Fold from DeepMind or from Google, ⁓ mean, that's hugely impressive science, engineering and technology all coming together. It's ⁓ benefiting drug discovery and
You know, those sorts of applications are there to benefit humanity and they really are and they can. And that's the power of technology if applied to the right things. The danger is it gets misused, it falls into the wrong hands and it becomes really different. But my hope is that, as I say, you know, some of the challenges we see right now will naturally rebalance because they have to. The human race hasn't gone through this kind of thing hundreds of times before and not rebalance. So I'm fairly confident it's as rough as it feels right now that
that we will get to a better place. My hope is that the technology gets harnessed. My hope is that, however, whatever world order looks like, whether it's the concept of nation state still exists in 50 years time, I hope whatever that governance looks like, it's focused on the greater good rather than on ⁓ the financial benefit of a handful of people. ⁓ the more I speak to people who understand this stuff and...
not just at the technology level, but at the policy level. And the more I think, yeah, do you know what? There's a lot of noise at the moment, but at some point this is going to get, there are too many people doing good things, doing really good things for this to disappear.
Julie Bishop (23:58)
I agree, I think there is a lot of good going on.
We do have a few.
uber wealthy people in our industry that don't act very responsibly which I find quite disappointing ⁓ but hopefully
Phil Wharton (24:19)
Yeah, I mean, you're
I mean, one positive statement I will make, because it's one that I'm aware of. If you think about some of the work that Google fund. So if you think about Google.org, for example, and some of the ⁓ R &D work they do, it's phenomenal. mean, absolutely. And, you know, some of what they can track now with ⁓ satellite imagery in Google Earth and some of the ⁓
Julie Bishop (24:34)
Yeah.
Phil Wharton (24:45)
really smart applications of AI are starting to change, make positive change all over the And I think that's encouraging. think my problem with that is it far too often doesn't make its way to the front line, to being sold as a core product. I think that's just, there is a sort of systemic thing that needs to shift and we need to find a way to make, recognize the value in.
in operating differently. And I think that's going to come in stages. It starts with recognising we need to invest in resilience and then it comes to, well, hang on a minute, we need to allocate capital to stopping this, need to reverse this stuff. So I think it will come, ⁓ but it might come with a bit of a slap in the face first.
Julie Bishop (25:29)
and now I'm gonna move I move us on to quite
less serious topic Phil ⁓ just wanna cuz I've loved the answers I've heard from this because it's such a wide range for everybody I've asked ⁓ what's the strangest or weirdest thing that's happened to you when you've been working in IT
Phil Wharton (25:51)
I've been in some really interesting organisations in some really interesting places. You know, if you think about what Rolls Royce do, I've been in some very
sort of secret squibble parts of that as well, which were brilliant. Obviously, I won't talk about that. But if I think about ⁓ the Eden project, if I go way back then, because this is sort of early days of me developing my sort of sustainability thinking and learning from some from some wonderful
that were founders of that. And likes of Tim Smith, founding director like Howard Jones and people like that. Wonderful. And I continue to learn from them today. if I think about what we did with some of our... So you think about the Eden Project, you think about a hole in the ground in Cornwall with some really big greenhouses and it's amazing. But the reach is far greater than that. And there were some projects at the time which were ⁓ linked through technology. And technology was the reason they helped grow these projects.
And they're called gardens for life was one of the examples. And there were a number of schools that were linked across various parts of the world, India, Africa, and the UK in particular. But out of these grew local communities. education was at heart of it. But these groups that were sharing cultural challenges and this is what we grow and this is how we grow it and this is what we've learned and the same in England.
But it grew from that. It started as a catalyst, but it grew from that. And technology was at the heart, as I say, of connecting those. But equally, we took a load of our repurposed devices, laptops and so on, and sent them out to some of these groups. they're small things and, as I say, probably largely irrelevant these days, but I'm going back 20 years now. But just having the ability to democratize access to stuff.
Julie Bishop (27:40)
Yes.
Phil Wharton (27:41)
It makes
a huge difference if you think about the information flows that come from that. So being involved in that, think, was perhaps the most wonderful as well as the oddest, know, from a hole in ground in Cornwall to a remote community and a group of kids and their parents getting involved and so on, somewhere in the middle of Africa is pretty cool.
Julie Bishop (28:03)
Thank you. And thank you so much for that. I really enjoyed this conversation. I the depth of knowledge that you have in this area, the way that it's such a key part of what you do. But I love that throughout all of the things you've retained your positivity, because
Phil Wharton (28:05)
Thank you. ⁓
Julie Bishop (28:23)
it would be very easy to sort of say, woe is me, the world is ending.
And it's important that we keep looking forward, keep looking at how we can improve and how we can, we can make a difference. And I think particularly for people at the stage of the careers that you and I are at Phil, it's exciting to try and make things better for the future generation. It's that's what that's what we're here to do. We're not here to
make ourselves rich off the younger generation. We're here to make it better for the younger generation.
Phil Wharton (28:57)
Yeah,
part of my positivity comes from that generation, both my own kids, but others out there that are thinking differently and challenging differently and want something completely different. that's, you know, it's their future. Absolutely not ours.
Julie Bishop (29:10)
It's so exciting. We found a number of our youngsters have joined us because we're a B Corp. They wanted to work for B Corp. And then we talked to people of our age who haven't even heard of what a B Corp is. It is incredibly exciting, the younger generation. feel very switched, very positive.
Phil Wharton (29:15)
Yeah, and that's brilliant.
Yeah,
one sort of, sorry, but we run out of time a little bit. One final example, I mean, I did a little bit of work with London Business School. They have some of the best postgraduate education in the world and one of the best MBAs in the world. But these things are hugely expensive and perhaps only available to a few and perhaps could be available to more. But speaking to some of the students there, you know, they wanted change. They wanted to be taught about leadership for the next 50 years, not the last 50 years. And they wanted to
They
and lobbied hard for new electives in sustainability and so on. And there's some really good stuff going on there as a result of that young generation just saying, hang on a minute, if you're not going to do it, we're going to do it. So there's definitely a momentum shift.
Julie Bishop (30:10)
Sweet.
Thank you. I've really enjoyed
talk. Please let's stay in touch and let's work together in the future. Thank you.
Phil Wharton (30:19)
Thank you.
Brilliant. Nice talking to you. See you again.