The Green Pipeline, continued...

So my last entry was concerning what can be done to make the animation pipeline more ecologically friendly, and then I kind of went through the processes that are common to all (2d,3d stop motion stuff with linear scripts; well you know what I mean) animation. Ok so there are some types which would not stick to this, flick book, sand animation to name a couple, but most of it (the sucsessful stuff) is pretty regimented, and calls for planning.
Then I looked at the processes for stopframe scenery and flagged the use of materials that can not be re-used. as a solution to this I suggested back-lit/projected sets with some kind of adjustable frame. Thats all cool, so what about the 3d stuff like fully made in a package like Maya? There have been several advances in cloud storage recently; and with the advent of usb3 and fibre optics plus the compression tools available there is a real case for that. Also; instead of just keeping the data in one place all the time the data 'chases the moon' ie it goes where it is coolest (not like a trendy bar, eejit!!) to save energy on the cooling.
There are also people out there who offer number crunching services;ie render farms, they actually his I know would have several people I know freeking (Pete) but it is out there and I am sure the machines they have are a lot more energy efficient than the machines most of us have access to. And unlike us when the render is finished no just sitting there for the rest of the night; its on with the next job.
Other less obvious ways of helping the environment could be to limit the ammount of sub-divisions to the things that are closest to the camera, and graduate them away from the camera. This will save render time as we know and also energy when rendering. Also the simple things like turning monitors off when rendering and studio lights. enough from me, im sure you can think of loads more processes that can be altered to benefit the environment.
Its little things we can do like this that can make our industry greener and our planet a more pleasant place to live.