In December 2006 President Bush signed legislation that directed the U.S Environmental Protection Agency to study energy use in IT data centers. Last month the European Union, uncharacteristically following the lead of Mr. Bush on environmental matters, said it will study a voluntary code of conduct for energy use for data center operators. Language as a service (LaaS) providers operate data centers for processing translation jobs.

This week Opticentre, a provider of multilingual tech pub solutions headquartered in Bulgaria, chose greenhouse gases as its way to distinguish itself from its competitors. The Plovdiv-based outsourcer announced that it undertook an initiative to “become the world’s greenest and cleanest localization engineering center in 2007.” To get there the company has chosen “energy-slashing” computers, 100% solar power for its “hubs in sunny Bulgaria,” and paperless offices with energy-saving QA Monitors and print simulators.” Great goals indeed, but we think that the paperless office is as likely as the paperless bathroom. But intent counts for a lot, so kudos to Opticentre.

Opticentre isn’t alone in being green. A while back we noticed that UK-based language service provider Lingo24 “takes sustainable development very seriously and has established an environmental policy for its employees worldwide to follow. The guidelines are published here so that all employees are aware of expected behaviour and so other companies may see how simple it can be for companies to help reduce their impact on the world’s resources.” Among its tactics is limited travel, a policy easy enough for today’s geographically distributed, often virtual language service provider to implement.

Why announce that you’re environmentally aware? For one thing, it does single you out from the multitudes — until everybody else plays follow the leader � la Web 2.0. But the optimist in us hopes that these companies truly care about energy use and the environment.