Thoughts on Green

I’m a huge proponent of sustainability and all things green. As more and more companies are making commitments to becoming carbon neutral, I’ve started thinking about Collective Idea and our greenness. I’m not ready to say we’re going carbon neutral (mostly because I haven’t done the calculations) but let’s see how we’re doing.

The green bits

• No office space. We work out of our houses and coffee shops.
  • No commuting (I ride my bike to meetings very often)
  • One of our favorite coffee shops is very environmentally conscious. The others, much less so.
• Few office supplies
  • We don’t use much paper (email invoices, electronic records) and I’d like to reduce even more. Plus I reuse and recycle.
  • No fax machine. Banks are the only people who seem to think these are still cool. I’m not getting one on principle.
• Hosting with DreamHost, which has become completely green!

The brown bits

• Other Servers. Currently, only Collective Idea, a number of friends and family, and clients’ development sites are hosted on the green DreamHost. This blog, mail, svn, and other stuff are hosted on a variety of other boxes, running 24/7
• Travel. We’ve started going to more and more conferences, and usually having to fly to them.

I’d like to see what we can do to improve before jumping to buy carbon offsets. Certainly we could consolidate servers (which I’m thinking about from a cost perspective), and there’s probably more. Regardless, I’m trying to think green from a corporate perspective in addition to a personal one.

4 Comments

1. Lupe — May 24, 2007

   What about having your web site powered by solar….AISO (http://www.aiso.net) is 100% solar powered, both their servers and data center are powered by onsite solar panels. And they also have a partnership with Co-Op America, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Green Building Council. Plus, they are doing more then just making sure their electricity is green. Their data center and office is green too by using environmentally friendly air conditioners, solar tubes to bring in natural light, a propane powered generator instead of diesel, VMWare virtualization to reduce their server electricity usage, 6 watt energy saving desktop computers for their employees, and soon to be LEED certified as a green data center, the only public one in North America, at least that I have found so far.

2. Daniel Morrison — May 25, 2007

   Lupe, I wasn’t familiar with your company, but it sounds like a great idea. Going directly green is certainly better than buying offsets.

   We’ll consider it in the future.

3. Flhasaond — November 28, 2022

   VMware virtualization to cut down on server electricity use, 6 watt energy-saving desktop computers for staff members, and soon to be LEED certified as a green data center—at least, that’s what I’ve found to be the only public one in North America. drift boss

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