-- The world of IT has a long ways to go to improve its environmental footprint: one has only to look at the often-cited statistic that the industry contributes the same amount of emissions as the global air travel industry for an example.

But in addition to the many ways that IT manufacturers and tech professionals are improving the performance of their computers, servers and data centers, high-tech solutions to more bricks-and-mortar corporate environmental issues are increasingly coming to the fore.

The new HP Handheld sp400 All-in-One scanner and printer.

Two cases in point: yesterday both Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems unveiled new and upgraded solutions to problems that companies are facing every day.

HP teamed with UPS to develop a new, paperless printer and wireless device that can save time and significant amounts of paper. Sun Microsystems gave its OpenEco.org climate-management website a significant upgrade. Both technologies bring the companies' IT expertise to decidedly non-IT arenas.

The new HP-UPS printing system is a wearable and hands-free, mobile scanning and printing device that the companies say will save over 1,300 tons of paper each year by printing shipping information directly onto boxes. UPS already brought the scanners to 41 of its package centers in the United States, and plans to expand that number to 55 centers in the next two months.

From the physical to the virtual, Sun Microsystems yesterday unveiled an overhauled version of its OpenEco.org emissions-mapping website to incorporate emissions data from many different types of sources. Based on a social network model like Facebook or LinkedIn, OpenEco.org encourages business leaders to measure and share the emissions associated with their facilities, whether they're office buildings, data centers or hospitals. The only requirement for joining OpenEco.org is sharing emissions data, which companies can do transparently or anonymously.

Launched just over a year ago, the site is still on the fledgling side, but yesterday's updates to the site's functionality bring more flexibility and the ability to compile more accurate data for businesses.